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EDITED BY 



HON. ANDREW GARRAN, M.A., LL.D., M.L.C 



ILLUSTRATED BY 



LEADING AUSTRALIAN AND AMERICAN ARTISTS 



Under the Supervision of Frederic B. Scheli 



WITH OVER EIGHT HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. 



VOL. I. 



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Picturesque Atlas Publishing Company, Limited, 

SYDNEY, MELBOURNE, LONDON, and NEW YORK. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



1892. 



Copyrighted 1886, 1887, 1888 and 1891 



IN GREAT BRITAIN 



BY 

The picturesque ATLAS PUBLISHING CO., Limited. 



Copyrighted 1887 and 1891 



BY 



The PICTURESQUE ATLAS PUBLISHING CO., Limited, 



IN THE 



UNITED STATES OF AxMERICA. 



PREFACE 



Australia has no part in the early history of the human race or in the develop- 
ment of its civilization ; it contains no traces of ever having been the seat of empire — 
no ruins, no mounds, to indicate that it was the dwelling-place, in the far past, of 
industrious and fertile populations. Its great contributions to the world's store, material 
and spiritual, will have to be the work of the future, and it already promises not to be 
backward in the fulfillment of that obligation. To the student of physical science, it is 
indeed a land full of interest, because, geologically, it is one of the oldest countries in 
the world, and has suffered so little from submersion that the earlier types of the earth's 
fauna and flora — types found elsewhere only in the form of fossils — can still be studied 
in a living state. To the enthusiastic searcher after the footprints left in the march of 
past ages, Australia furnishes, in its animal and vegetable life, records which are only 
just beginning to be deciphered. To the student of ethnology, Australia offers little 
but the customs of a few degraded tribes — customs not materially differing from those 
found elsewhere. For the student of comparative grammar, there is a variety of unde- 
veloped dialects principally worth studying in order to determine to what branch of the 
human family the Australian aborigines belong, and whence and when they migrated. 

That in early days Australia was not better peopled, and that its inhabitants never 
rose above the elementary stage of acquiring a subsistence, and fashioning the rude tools 
necessary thereto, is largely due to the aridity of the climate on all but the eastern 
coast. Wherever man depends on the bounty of Nature, and has not learnt how to 
cultivate and garner, there can be no advance in civilization if that bounty is capricious. 
Australia is a land of uncertain rain-fall and of certain droughts, and its barbarous 
tribes, dependent on the spontaneous produce of Nature, could not increase. When the 
clouds are pitiless, the people perish unfed. The Australian aborigines were in this way 
kept down, and never reached the point when they were able by human contrivance to 
neutralize the precariousness of the earth's spontaneous supph' of food. 

For this reason Australia, though populated for centuries, was a blank in history 
until it was discovered by Europeans ; and, even when discovered, it was thought to be 
of no value. Ardent and intrepid navigators, suspecting its existence, searched for and 
found it, but the jewel when discovered was rejected as worthless. The Dutch might 
have owned this Great Island Continent if they had thought it worth while to follow up 
the discoveries of their seamen ; but though plenty of coast-line was traversed and 



,^, PREFACE. 



charted, they saw nothing that promised sudden wealth, or that seemed to afford a basis 
for permanent colonization. It was not till an Englishman sailed along the eastern coast 
that a favourable report was given of the fitness of the country for settlement ; and 
even the English, colonizers as they then were, and with their American experience to 
guide and encourage them, would not have made this addition to their enterprise had 
it not been that they were in search of a distant place whither to ship their criminals 
so as to be troubled with them no more. It was to this social necessity, and not to 
any greed of territory, that England owes it that her flag waves by all the " long wash 
of Australian seas." Cook's discovery of the eastern coast remained unvalued and 
unutilized until the idea was taken up that Botany Bay would be a good place to which 
to ship off the accumulating inmates of the prisons. It is fortunate for the English 
people that, having secured this prize, they were allowed to keep it for themselves. 
All other national claims lapsed ; no rival flags have floated over this Island Continent, 
and no military frontiers have been established. Within its own borders, the history of 
the country has been peace. 

Australia, beginning as a prison, revealed in time that it was a splendid wool- 
farm, and, when that industry had been established on secure foundations, it made the 
further revelation that underneath the grass lay a magnificent gold-mine. This " precipi- 
tated it into a nation," and from that time forth its material resources have been 
steadily developed. And side by side with its increase in wealth has been its advance- 
ment socially, intellectually and politically. 

Australia has just celebrated its Centenary, and looks back with some wonder, not 
unmixed with pride, at what it has accomplished within the century. No time could be 
more fitting to gather into one publication the record of that which has been, the 
picture of that which is, and the adumbration of that which is to be. Such is the aim 
of this book. It tells the story of the Great Southern Land in all its different subdivi- 
sions, and, by the aid of pen and pencil, shows, to all who wish to know, how Australia 
presents itself, and what are the shadowed indications of its coming destiny. This is a 
task which has hitherto remained unaccomplished. So far as the historical portion is 
concerned, reference has every-where been made, not only to the most trustworthy 
records, but to living authorities wherever the memory of old colonists could be advan- 
tageously laid under contribution, for there are men still living who were pioneers, and 
who began to play their part when the country was in its first stage of development. 
The movement described, though not without its oscillations, has, in the main, been one 
of progress, and sometimes of rapid progress, and those who are engaged in working 
out social and economical theories may find in the varied experience of the different 
Australasian colonies many facts of great illustrative value. The writers and artists 
engaged on this work have endeavoured to be true to Nature and to fact, and have 
diligently sought out what was most worth presenting to the mind and to the eye. 
Such as Australia is, it is here pourtrayed — sometimes in its native condition, sometimes 
as modified by the civilizing hand of man. The country as it was found is contrasted 
with the country as it has been made — the camping-ground of blackfellows with the 
splendid and populous city ; the old hunting-grounds with the smiling orchards and 
productive farms that have succeeded to them. 



PREFACE. V 

The Editor's special acknowledgments are due to those gentlemen who so kindly 
responded to his request for literary assistance. It is proper to say that Mr. James 
Smith, of Melbourne, kindly undertook the responsibility for the whole of the Vic- 
torian section, and also for that of Tasmania ; the Rev. H. T. Burgess, for South 
Australia ; Mr. W. H. Traill, for Queensland ; Sir T. Cockburn-Campbell, Bart., for 
Western Australia ; Mr. H. Brett, for New Zealand ; and Mr. Frank J. Donohue, for 
the Administrative and the social and political sections. The names of the several 
contributors are acknowledged in the Table of Contents, and the Editor feels under 
special obligations to those missionaries and ex-missionaries who have written on the 
Islands, and who have furnished information which few but themselves could supply. It 
has been a matter of great regret that the Editor has been unable to avail himself of 
all the valuable matter put before him ; but in a publication of this kind, where the 
number of parts is limited from the outset, where the occasional use of smaller type is 
not available, and where each article has to be fitted with Procrustean rigour to the 
exact space allotted to it, compression and omission have been unavoidable. 

In addition to the regular contributors, the Editor has been under great obligations 
for information, suggestion, correction and revision, to many gentlemen who have kindly 
given their assistance, amongst whom he may specially mention Messrs. John Rae, late 
Under Secretary for Public Works and Commissioner for Railways, New South Wales ; 
P. F. Adams, Surveyor-General ; Harkie Wood, Under Secretary for Mines, Sydney ; 
S. H. Lambton, Secretary to the General Post Office, Sydney; T. A. Coghlan, 
A.M.I.C.E., Government Statistician, New South Wales; C. S. Wilkinson, F.G.S., 
Government Geologist, New South Wales ; R. L. J. Ellery, Government Astronomer, 
Victoria ; Clement L. Wragge, Government Astronomer, Queensland ; Charles Todd, 
C.M.G., F.R.A.S., P.M.G., South Australia; Charles Moore, Director of the Botanical 
Gardens, Sydney ; W. R. Guilfoyle, Curator of the Botanical Gardens, Melbourne ; 
J. G. Anderson, Under Secretary for Education, Queensland ; W. Gray, Secretary 
General Post Office, Wellington, New Zealand; Captain J. Shortt, R.N., Tasmania; 
Sir Malcolm A. C. Eraser, K.C.M.G., Western Australia; Rev. Dr. Woolls, Ph.D., 
F.L.S. ; His Honor Judge McFarland ; His Honor Judge Dowling ; Rev. T. S. 
FoRSAiTH ; W. H. Hargraves ; Robert G. D. Fitzgerald, Deputy Surveyor-General ; 
Sir Henry Ayres, President of the Legislative Council of South Australia; His Eminence 
Cardinal Moran ; Hon. G. H. Cox ; Hon. P. G. King ; Lieutenant Field, R.N. ; 
Nicholas Lockyer ; J. J. Atkinson; E. J. Welch; H. W. Howitt ; Henry Stuart 
Russell, Author of "Genesis of Queensland"; W. Wilkins, late Under Secretary to 
the Council of Education of New South Wales; Dr. Shortlanu; J. W. Hackett, 
Editor of the Perth Examiner; Edward Dowling, late Secretary to the Board of 
Technical Education in New South* Wales ; to Mr. Henry King, Sydney, and Messrs. 
Foster and Martin, Melbourne ; and last, not least, to the Assistant Editor, .Mr. Fred. 
J. Broomfield, to whose constant, patient and minute attention the work is greatly indebted. 

ANDREW GARRAN. 



CONTENTS 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. By Fred. J. Broomfield 
A.\D Alk.xander Sl'therl.\.nd 

CAPTAIN COOK. By Fred. J. Broomfield and 
Ai.E.\ANDER Sutherland . 

HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 
By G. li. Barton, Alexander Suvherland 
AND Fred. J. Broomfield. 
Early Settlement . 
Governor Hinter . 
The Introduction of Wool 
Governor King 
Governor Bligh 
Governor M.\cquarie 
Governor Brisbane . 
Governor Darling . 
Governor Bourke . 
Governor Gipps 
Sir Chari.e.s Augustus Fitzroy 
The New Constitution 

EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. By Fred 
J. Broomfield. 
Bass and Flinders .... 
Flinders in the "Investigator" 

OXLEY and CUNNI.VGHAM . 

Hume and Hoveli. . . . 

Progress of Exploration from 1828 

TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. By 
Alexander Sutherland, R. von Lendenfeldt 
and Francis Myers. 

The Coast-Line ..... 

Mountains ...... 

Rivers ...... 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 
Myers and Fred. J. 
The Harbour 



By the Editor, Francis 
Broomfield. 



23 



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62 

65 
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103 
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log 
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145 



The City and Suburbs . . . . 

Parks and Pleasure Grounds 

THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. By 
Francis Myers, Fred. J. Broomfield and 
J. P. Dowling. 

The Hunter River District 

The Northern District . 

The Western Dlstrict 

The Southern District . 

THE JENOLAN caves. By Francis Myers. 

HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. By James 
Smith. 
The Discovery of Port Phili.ii> 
Collins at Sorrento ... 

The First Settlement — The Hentys . 
The Arrival of Bat.man . 
The Story of Buckley ... 
John Pascoe F'awkner 
Captain Lonsdale .... 
Governor Latrobe .... 
The Discovery of Gold ... 
Sir Henry Barkly — Burke and Wills . 
From the Administraiton of Governor Darun( 
The Melbourne International Exhibition 
The Colony of Victoria in i8go 

TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. By James Smith 

The Coast-Line .... 
Mountains ..... 
Lakes ..... 

Rivers ..... 

THE CITY OF MELBOURNE. By James Smith 
Port Phillip Bay .... 
The City ..... 
The Suburbs ..... 



164 

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364 

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392 
399 

411 
424 
470 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Captain Cook . . Frontispiece. 

Torres Straits To-day . . . . i 

Torres on the Northern Coast of Australia . 3 

Sighting Land ...... 4 

The "Duyphen" in the Gulf of Carpentaria . 5 

Antony Van Diemen ..... 7 

Tasman's Carpenter Landing at .Storm Bay . 9 

William Dampier ... .11 

.\ Malay Proa in the Gulf of Carpentaria . 13 
Cape Tribulation, North-eastern Coast of Aus- 
tralia ...... 15 

The Great Australian Barrier Reef . 17 

.V North Australian Native . . .19 

Australia's Iron-bound Coast .21 

The " Cygnet " Beached . (Tail-piece) . 22 

I.mtial " F " . . . . . 23 

Sir Joseph Banks .24 

A Mountain Gorge on the New Zealand Coast 

Facing ...... 25 



Cape Green, on the Eastern Coast of Australia 

Captain Cook's Pigeon House 

Bare Island, Botany Bay . . . . 

Cook Landing at Botany Bay 

Australian Birds and Fish .... 

Captain Cook's Landing-Place, Botany Bay 

Captain Cook proclaiming New South Wales a 
British Possession, Botany Bay, 1770 

Captain Cook Sighting the Glass-house Moun- 
tains, Eastern Australia 

Estuary near which the " Endeavour " Struck 

The "Endeavour" on a Reef 

Burial of Captain Cook's Remains at Sea, and 
HIS Monument at Hawaii 

Antoine de Bougainville .... 

Figure-head of the "Resolution" . 

Cook's Monument, Hyde Park, Sydney 

A Forest Glade in Tropical Australia — Facing . 

Shakespeare Head, Mercury B.\y, New Zealand 



PAGE. 

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VIIT 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Relics from Cook's ExPEmrioNs Tail-piece 

Sydney Cove, Aigust 20, 1788 

Viscount Sydney . . . • 

Captain Arthur Phillip 

Phillip's First Landing-place, Botany Bay 

Jean Francois Ualaup, Comte de la Perouse 

The Tomb i>k Lk Recevelr at Boiany Bay 

The La Perouse Monument . 

Relics from the La Perouse Expedition . 

The First Fleet entering Botany Bay, tiir i8th 

of January, 17SS 
Captain Phillip's First Sight of Port Jackson 
The First Government House : Pitt Street, Sydney 
Governor John Hunter 
The Cow I'astures, Camden Park 
Macartiiur's Homestead, Camden 
Macarthur's Tomb, at Camden 
Thf. Hawkesbury at Wiseman's Ferry Facing 
Governor Philip Gidi.ey King 
Governor William Bi.igh 
Bligh's Boat Abandoned by the "Bounty" 
Blaxland and Lawson's Tree 
The Old Road to Bathurst, Mount Victoria 
Governor Lachlan Macquarie 
The Argyle Cut . . .' . _ 

Port Macquarie, Sydney Cove 
Old Government House, Parramatta 
Governor Brisbane 
Governor Darling 
Bushranger's Cave, Mount Victoria 
Governor Bourse's Statue 
Governor Sir Richard Bourke 
Wentworth's Statue in the Sydney University 
Governor Sir George Gipps . 
The .Gate Lodge, Government House 
Government House, Sydney . 
The Valley of the Grose . . Facing 

Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy 
Sir William Denison .... 
Fort Denison ..... 
Sir John Young (Lord Lisgar) 
The Earl of Belmore 

Farm Cove and the Garden Palace, Sydney, in i 
Sir Hercules Robinson 

Lord Carrington .... 

Frazer's Fountain, Sydney Tah.-i'ieck 

Captain Matthew Flinders . 
Flinders and Bass in the "Tom Thumh" 
Bass's Straits ..... 
Caitain Nicholas Baudin 
Cunningham's Monument, Boianicai. Gardens, 

Sydney ..... 
The Marked Tree, Ai.bury . 
Monument to Hume at Alburv 
Sir Thomas Mitchell .... 
Captain Charles Sturt 
A Gully in the Blue Mountains Facing 

Twofold Bay ..... 
Point Perpendicular, Jervis Bay 
The Kiama Blow-hole 
The Seal Rock Light-house . 
Stone Cairn, Mount Kosciusko 
Granite Rocks, Mount Kosciusko 
Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains 
GovrTT's Leap ..... 
The Katoomba Falls, and the Three Sisters 
Mount Piddi.vgton .... 

Mount Wincen ..... 
Mount Lindsay, in the Macpherson Range 
The Water-fall at Goveit's Leaf* . Facing 

Sandstone Peaks of the Far West . 
A Sandstone Table-land 



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Nothing in Sight: the Spinifex Country in the 

Far West . 
A Darling River Wool-Barge 
The Nepean, near Penrith . 
The Upper Nepean 
The Hunter at Maitland 
The River Paterson 
The Richmond River at Coraki 
The Clarence, near Grafton Tail-piece 

South Head Light, -near the Entrance to Port 

Jackson . . ' ■ 

The Entrance to Darling Harbour 
The Eastern Side of Circular Quay 
Elizabeth Bay and Darling Point 
Sydney Harbour from Shark Point 
Manly Beach .... 
The Ocean Beach, Manly 
Sydney Heads from the South . Facing 

"The Gap" ..... 

Hornby Light-house, Inner South Head 
The Fortifications at South Head 
The Manly Wild-flower Show 
One of the Big Guns at Middle Head . 
Lavender Bay ..... 
Lane Cove River .... 

Darling Harbour from the Pyrmont Bridge 
Early^ Barrack-van .... 
The Old Windmill at Miller's Point 
Circular Quay on the Western Side 
George Street from the Parapet of the Post 

Office .... 

The Sydney Post Office Tower 
The Sydney Post Office Colonnade 
King Strf.et looking East 
The Sydney Town Hall and St. Andrew's 

Cathedral 
Pitt Street looking South . 
Circular Quay, Sydney Harbour . Facing 

Bridge Street from Macquarie Place 
Mori's Statue, Macquarie Place 
Macquarie Street from Bridge Street 
A Cliff-face Stair-way, Darlinghurst 
A Glimpse of Sydney from Darlinghurst 
St. John's Church, Darlinghurst 
The Redfern Railway Station 
The Glebe Presbyterian Church 
The Entrance to a State School . 
A State School Class-room . 
School Children Travelling at State Expense 
The Central Markets . 

The Interior of the Central Markets 
A Parramatta Orange Grove 
Saturday Night in George Street 
The Inner Domain from the Siie ok Garden 

Palace .... 
The Pleasure Grounds of Sydney . Facing 

The Lily Pond, Botanic Gardens . 
A Walk in the Botanic Gardens . 
The Sea-side Waj.k, Outer Domain 
" Mrs. Macquarie's Chair " . 
St. Mary's Gate, Outer Domain 
Hyde Park, Sydney, from Chancery Square 
In the Zoological Gardens . 
Kangaroos ..... 

The Cassowary, Emu and Native Companion 
The Dingo or Native Dog . 
Coogee Bay ..... 

A Glimpse in Parramatta Park 
The National Park, Port Hacking 
Fletcher's Glen, Bondi . Tail-piece 

Newcastle in 1829 .... 

Nobby's Head, Newcastle . . , 



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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



IX 



Hunter Sireet, Newcastle .... 

Shippi.ng Coal at Bullock Island . 

THi Lucerne Harvest' in the Maitland District 

High Street, West Maitland 

Newcastle from Nobby's Head . Facing 

St. Mary's Church, West Maitland 

The Town of East Maitland 

The Town of West Maitland 

The Church of England, Paterson 

Church-going ai- Paterson Township 

The Singleton Agriculiural Show-ground 

Main Streei-, Singleton .... 

The Peel River at Tamworth 

Peel Street, Tamworih .... 

The Dangar Falls ..... 

The Anglican Cathedral at Ar.midale 
Armidale ...... 

TiiE Roman Caitioiic Cathedral at Armidale 
The Wai.lamumbi Falls .... 

The Rich.moni) at Lismore .... 

Casino, on the Richmond .... 

The River Clarence at Grafton 
A Reach on the Clarence ... 
The Wharf at Graf ion . . . 

The Court House and the Post Office at Grafton 
Hauling Cedar in the Richmond River District 
Ke.mpsey and the Macleay River 
The Sugar Industry on the Richmond River 
Facing .... 

Parramaita .... 

St. Matthew's Church, Windsor 
Stud Sheep of the Mudgee DisiRicr 
The Anglican Cathedral at Baitiurst 

BATHURSr, and the GoVERNMENr BUILDINGS 

The Roman Catholic Cathedral at Bathuksi 
The Presbvierian Church ai Bathurst- 
The Sunny Corner Silver-mines 
The Lachlan River and the Town of Forbes 
Wellington ..... 

The Macquarie ai' Dubbo 

A CAMEI.-TEAM AT Wll.CANNIA 

The Windings of the Murray ai' Albury Facing 

Main Street, Bourke . 

Transit of Wool on the Darling 

The Coi.i.in(;wood Paper Mill. Liverpool 

St. John's Church. Campbei.ltown . 

Ruse's Tombstone 

FiTZROY Falls, Moss Vale 

The Residence of Lord Carkingio.n ai Sutton 

Forest 
The City of Goui.bur.> 

The Roman C.\thoi.ic Cathedral ai Goulburn 
The Anglican Cathedral at Goulburn 
Lake George ..... 

WoLLONGONG from lllL LlGili-lloUSE 

WoLi.oNGONG Harbour 

KlAMA ...... 

Carlotta Akcu, Jenolan Caves . Facing 

Mori's Cheese Farm ai' Bodalla 

Bega from Chapel Hill 

The Wharf at Taihra 

Gundagai ..... 

Cootamundra 

The Public Gardens ai Dkniliquin 

The Town Hall, Deniliquin 

The Mi.'rrumbidgee at Wagga Wagga 

Fac-simii.e of the Clai.mani's Hand-wiuiing 

The Tichborne Claimant 

The Original Site of the Claimant's Shop 

An Albury Vineyard . . ■ • 

Changing Trains at Albury 

The Railway Station at Albury . 



PAGE. 

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Summer Streei', Orange Tail-piece 

The Grand Arch, Eastern Entrance 

The Arch Cave, Looking North 

A Passage in the Caves 

A Sassafras Gully in the Black Spur Facing 

The Broken Column, Cathedral Cave 

The Exhibition, Cathedral Cave . 

The Devil's Coach-house, Jenolan Caves 

The Wellington Caves 

On the Road . Tail-piece 

The " Lady Nelson " Entering Port Phillip 

Lieutenant-Governor Collins 

Thomas Henty ..... 

Hentv's Wool-stoke, the First Building Erected 

in Victoria 
Batman Treating wiih the Blacks 
William Buckley 
Buckley's Cave 
Government House, Melbourne . Facing 

The "Enterprise," and Fawkner's House on the 

Yarra .... 

Captain Lonsdale's House 
John Pascoe Fawkner 
Lord Melbourne 
Captain Lonsdale 
Batman's Monument 
Governor Latrobe 
"Black Thursday" 
En Route for the Diggings ' . 

A Hut and a Store at the Diggings 
A Gold Escort in the Fifties 
The Eureka Siockade, Bai.larat, on Sunday 

Morning, December 3, 1854 
Hon. Peter Lalor 
Sir Charles Hotham 
Sir Henry Barki.y 
Robert O'Hara Burke 
W. J. Wills 
Cooper's Creek 
John King 

Houses of Pakliameni', Melbourne Facing 

The Grave of Burke and Wills in the Mel 

BOURNE Cemetery 
The Monument 10 Burke and Wills 
The Discovery of John King by E. J. Welch 
Governor Sir Charles IL Darling 
Viscount Canterbury . 
The Marquis of Normanbv 
The Exhibiiton Building, Carlton Gardens 
Sir Hi'.nrv Brougham Loch 
Fountain in the Carlton Gardens Tail- 
Off the Victorian Coast 
The Gabo Island Lighi-house 
The Pier, Port Albert 
Fishing off Port Albert 
Wilson's Promontory . 
Cape Otway .... 

^Portland .... 

Cape Nelson .... 
Cape Schanck .... Facing 

The Coast at Cape Bridgewater . 
The Watery Cave 
The Grand Cave 

The Northern Face of Mount Bogong 
The Western Peak of Mount Bogong 
Mount Feathertop 
Mount Abrupt . 
Mount Arapii.es 
The Mai.i.ee Hens' Nest 
The Gippsland Lakes 
Lake Tyers 
A Farm near Lake Tyers 



PAOB. 
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Lake Corangamitk, from Mount Leura 

Lakk Hindmarsh 

Thk St. K11.DA Esplanade Facing 

Thk Latrobk Rivkk 

Thk Snowv River 

Thk Lkrderbeku River at Bacchus Marsh 

Thk Hopkins River 

The Junction ok thk Rivers Mukkav anu Uaru.n 

Thk G0UI.BURN River . 

Thk Upper Murray and Mouni Dargal 

qukknsci.iff .... 

Sorrento .... 

Es Route for Sorrento 

Brighton Beach 

Port Melbourne 

Tiik Wili.iamstown Pier 

The Alfred Gravi.ng Dock 

Melbourne fro.m the Yarra Facing 

Divers at Work in Hobson s Bay 

Dredging the Yarra 

The Basin of the Yarra 

Flinders Street West 

The Prince's Bridge 

Flinders Lane 

SWANSTON Street Looking North 

The Melbourne Town Hall 

Collins Street Looking East 

Elizabeth Sirekt and the Posi Office 

Bourke Strkei Looking East 

A Night Alarm 

A Horse Bazaar Bourke Stkeei 

Collins Stkkei' East on Sunday Morning Facing 

The Law Courts 

The Equity Court 



PAQB. 

397 
398 
399 
401 
401 
403 
405 
407 
408 

409 
411 

413 
414 
415 
417 
419 
420 
421 
422 
422 
423 
425 
427 
429 

431 
433 
435 
437 
439 
441 
442 
443 
444 
445 



Melbourne, Looking East, from the Dome of tiii- 

Law CouRis 
Melbourne, Looking East, from the Dome 

Law Courts 
The Tklei'hone Exchange 
The Public Library 
The Wesley Church . 
Sr. Patrick's Cathedral 
The Government Offices 
The Legislative Council Chambers 
The Fmzroy Gardens 
The Carlton Gardens 
Spuing Street, Melbourne Facing 

The Hotham Town Hall 
The Zoological Gardens 
Okmond College 
The Collingwood Town Hall 
The Richmond Town Hall . 
A Reach on the Yarra 

The Methodist Ladies' College, Hawthorn 
The College of St. Francis Xavier, Kew 
The Yarra at Hawthorn 
CiiiusT Church, South Yarra 
The Pkahran Town Hall 
Toorak, from the Old Governmeni House 
The South Melbourne Town Hall 
All Saints' Church, St. Kii.da 
Erskine Falls, Lorne . Facing 

The Ai.BERr Park Lagoon 
The Melbourne Observatory 
In the Melbourne Botanic Gardens 
The Yarra above the Botanic Gardens 
In the Fmzroy Gardens . Tail-piece 



447 

449 

451 
453 
454 
455 
457 
459 
461 

463 
465 
467 
469 
471 
473 
474 
475 
477 
479 
480 
481 
483 
484 
485 
486 
487 
489 
491 
493 
495 
496 



AUSTRALIA 



O radiant Laml I o'er whom the sun's first dawning 

Fell brightest when God said, "Let there be Light"; 
O'er whom the day hung out its bluest awning, 

Flushed to white deeps of star-lustre by night ! 
O Land exultant 1 on whose lirow reposes 

A queenlier coronal than has been wrought 
From light of pearls, or bloom of Eastern roses, 

In the bright workshops of high Poet-thought ! 



"And once again will they, with eyes unheeding 

His Sacritice, uplift their guilty hands 
Each to his brother, and with rage exceeding, 

.•Vnd hist and vengeance, desolate the lands ; 
But this one land," so mused He, the Creator, 

"This will I bless, and shield from all the woe, 
That worthier among men, in ages later. 

May tind it pure, and, haply, hold it sol" 



O thou who hast, thy splendid hair entwining, 

A toil wove wreath, where are no blood-won bays; 
Who standest in a stainless vestment shining 

Before the eyes and lips of love and praise 1 
O wrought of old, in Orient clime and sunny. 

With all His richest Iraunties largely decked ; 
With heart all virgin gold and breath all honey, 

.Supremest work of greatest Architect ! 



Thus, sweet Australia, fell His benediction 

Of sleep up<m thee where no wandering breath 
Might come to tell thee of the loud aflliction 

Of cursing tongues, and clamouring hosts of death. 
.So with the peace of His great love around thee, 

And rest that clashing ages could not break, 
.Strong prying eyes of English seekers found thee ; 

Strong English voices cried to thee "Awake!" 



O Land of widest hope, of promise boundless I 

Why wert thou left upon a dark, strange sea, 
To wait through ages fruitless, scentless, soundless, 

Till from thy slumber men should waken thee? 
Why didst thou lie with -ear that never hearkened 

The sounds without — the cries of strife ard play. 
As some sweet child within a chamber darkened. 

Left sleeping long into a troubled day? 



For them a continent undreamed of, peerless — 

A realm for happier sons of theirs to be. 
One spot preserved, unspotted, bloodless, tearless, 

Beyond the rim of an enchanted sea 
Lay folded in the soft compelling languor 

Of warm south airs, as an awaiting bride. 
While strife and hate, and culminating anger 

Raged through the far-off nations battle-dyed. 



What opiate sealed thine eyes till all the others 

Grew tired and faint in East and West and North ? 
Why didst thou dream until thy joyful brothers 

Foimd where thou wert, and led thee smiling forth? 
Why didst thou mask the radiant smile thou wearest ? 

Why wert thou veiled from all the eager eyes? 
Why left so long, O first of lands and fairest. 

Beneath thy tent of unconjectured skies? 



Here no dread vestiges stood up imprinted 

W'ith evil messages and brands of Cain, 
No mounds of death or walls of refuge dinted 

With .signs that Christ had lived and died in vain ; 
No chill memorials here proclaimed the story 

Of kingships stricken for and murders done : 
Here was a marvel and a separate glory 

One land whose history ha<l not begun '. 



We know thy secret. In the awful ages. 

When yet was silence, and the world was white ; 
Ere yet on the Recording Volume's pages 

The stern-browed Angel had begun to write. 
Ere yet from Eden the sad feet ha<l wandered, 

Or yet was sin, or any spilth of blood ; 
In august judgment, C;o<l the Father pondered 

Upon His work, and saw that it was good — 

The Sovereign of suns and stars, the thunder 

Of whose dread I'ower we cannot understand, 
Sate gazing long upon the shining wonder 

Of this new world within His hollowed hand. 
With high, sad eyes, as one that saw a vision. 

And spake, " Lo, this My gift is fair to see 
But Pri<le will mar the glory, and derision 

Of many feet that will not follow Me. 

" I give My creatures shields of hope and warning ; 

I .set in fruitful ways of peace their first ; 
But even these will turn from Me, and scorning 

My counsel, hearken to the one Accurst, 
And Sin and Pain and Death will make inva.sion 

Of this alx)dc, and from a world undone. 
To Heaven will sound the moans of expiation 

They wring from Him, My well-beloved Son. 



One unsown garden fenced by sea-crags sterile. 

Whose mailed breasts push back strong-breasted waves, 
From all the years of fierce unrest and peril. 

And slaves, and lords, and broken blades, and graves 
One gracious freehold for the free, where only 

Soft dusky feet fell, reaching not thy sleep 
One field inviolate, untroidiled, lonely 

Across the dread of the uncharted deep ! 

O dear and fair 1 awakened from thy sleeping 

So late 1 The world is breaking into noon ; 
The eyes that all the morn were dim with weeping 

Smile through the tears that will cease dropping soon I 
Thine have no tears in them for olden sorrow. 

Thou hast no heartache for a ruineil past ; 
From bright to-day to many a bright to-morrow 

Shall be thy way, O first of lands and last ! 

God make us worthy now I The bitter mornings 

Of nations struggling from the blind long night 
Of Wrong, set high before our eyes are warnings. 

And finger-posts to guide us on to Right ! 
God make us manfullest of men, and bravest. 

To fight the fight for Thine and Thee, and stand 
Erect and watchful of this gift Thou gavest — 

Until at last we sit at Thy right hand ! 

John Farrei.i.. 



DEDICATION. 



To the memory of De Ouiros, Tasman, Dampier, Cook, Bass, 
Flinders and all those brave mariners who discovered our 
country ; 

To the memory of Hume and Hovell, Sturt, Mitchell, Leichhardt, 
Cunningham, Oxley, Burke and Wills, Kennedy. McKinlay, 
Stuart and all those self-sacrificing pioneers who crossed and 
recrossed our Continent and undeterred by privation and all 
manner of hardship made known to us its resources ; 

To the memory of Wentworth, and all those public-spirited men 
who fought for and won our coniitiuitional rights and liberties; 

To the settler, the miner, the farmer, the artisan ; to the muscle 
and brain and enterprise which has given a new common- 
wealth to the world ; 

To the youth to whom we look to maintain and defend it, 

^Ixis ^i5ook is dedicated. 



AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 




N the story of Australian 
discovery which we are 
about to record we find that 
this great Continent is practi- 
cally the prize of the latest 
comer. Nation after nation fol- 
lowed in each other's wake, but all unwitting of the treasure-trove which lay concealed 
behind its uninviting shores. Like the soul of the licentiate in the immortal story of 
" Gil Bias " one only could pierce the meaning of the inscription which marked the 
depository of a fortune. Chinese and Malay, Portuguese and Spaniard, Dutchman and 
Frenchman, urged as much by maritime passion and love of adventure as by national 
pride and greed of gain, sought that Great Southern Land which is even now but passing 
through the first stage of its infancy. At one time the Dutchman seemed to hold its future 



2 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

in the hollow of his palm, but he relaxed his grasp and never regained it. It was a 
great thing to lose — a Fifth part of the known world ; and he did not lose it by the 
fortune of war but by the misfortune of being ignorant of its value. To him. however, 
beloni'-s the credit of having traced the northern and western and part of the southern 
coasts, from Cape York to Cape Arid;, but the tropical islands had more fascination for 
him. as thev had for the English Dampier, than the bleak and desert coast-line he 
explored. Hence as far as the Dutch were concerned the Continent remained open for 
exploitation a century and a half from the date of l)e Quir's historical voyage in .search 
of a Southern Land. The choice was like that of the leaden casket in the old fable — the 
greatest prize was hidden in the lea.st, valuable exterior. Nor could the sturdy .sailors of 
Holland have done much with .Australia at the time of their first visit even had they 
tried to occupy it ; for, as we shall hereafter see, although the commerce of Australia had 
its origin in the exportation of sealskins and whale oil, it received its greatest impetus 
from the discover)' of the fitness of large tracts of the Continent for the growth of fine 
wool, and the time for that trade had not yet arrived. 

The ivory and spices which gave the East Indies their value in the eyes of the 
Portuguese Australia was lacking in, and the gold which made .South America worth the 
shedding of Spanish blood had not yet been discovered in the " New Atlantis " of the 
South. Hence the romance which clings around Australia's early history is the romance 
of effort rather than of achievement, a romance of old ships and old sailors, of mutinies 
on the high seas and collisions with natives, of bloodshed and water-famine, of hope 
deferred and heroic endeavour ; and then a great blank, as if the vision of the Tcrj-a 
Austraiis of the roinist days of old had faded from men's minds for a season, to re-ap- 
pear in a more modern, a commonplace and a less poetic gui.se. 

It is impossible to say when the existence of Bacon's " New Atlantis," like that of 
the old "Atlantis" of Plato's philosophic dream, was first diml\- suspected. Perhaps from 
the earliest period of the world's histor)-. Even the Ptolemaic theory of the configura- 
tion of the earth did not shut out from the minds of the Ancients some vague idea of 
an unknown Tcri-a Austraiis, some Ultima Iliulc of the South, that yet remained to be 
one day discovered ; and the early Christian Fathers discussed such hypotheses with as 
much vigour as decision. .Amongst them the venerable St. .Augustine, with all the fervour 
of strong religious conviction, wrote that " Nothing could be more absurd than to believe 
that land, even if it existed, on the opposite side of the world could i^e inhabited by 
human beings, for the Holy Scriptures made no mention of the fact, and it was 
obviously impossible that any of the de.scendants of our first parents could have sailed 
to or reached those countries without being missed." 

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, not only disposed of 
such arguments, but originated also a scientific theory that some extensive territory must 
of necessity exist on the opposite side of the globe b\- way of counterbalance ; and the 
Chinese, who were in all probability the earliest of the discoverers of the great Terra 
Austraiis confirmed this theory in a tale of a vast but unknown Southern Land. Towards 
the close of the thirteenth century Marco Polo \isited China, being the first European 
of whom any record exists who had achieved such a journey, and he supports the belief 
that the Chinese knew positively of the existence of Australia, although it is probable 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



that their discovery 
referred only to New 
Guinea — a country 
which from a remote 
period of antiquity had 
been an object of curi- 
osity to the civilized 
world. It is, indeed, 
matter for regret that 
the historical evidence 
of the first actual disco- 
ver)- of Australia is so 
shadowy and delusive. 
Amongst the European 
nations the Portuguese, 
the Spanish, the Dutch, 
the French have each 
and at different times 
shared the credit of its 
achievement ; and also 
amongst the peoples of 
Asia the Chinese and 
the Malays put for- 
ward claims to have 
been "the first that 
ever burst into that 
silent sea." 

The first mention 
in authentic history of 
any European visiting 
a supposed Southern 
Continent is contained 
in De Brosses' " His- 
toire des Navigations 
A ux Tcn-cs A us t rales, 
and relates to a certain 
Binot Paulmyer who, 
nearly four hundred 
years ago, landed on 
what was for long con- 
sidered to be the great 

Terra .Ijistralis, although it was in all probability the island of Madagascar. Para- 
phrasing the P>ench account, which is very circumstantial, we read somewhat as follows : 
When Vasquez de Gama had opened the road to the East Indies, I'Vench merchants 




H 

t/3 
D 
< 



O 
U 

^. 

s; 

■A 

X 

C-l 

as 
O 
Z 

X 

H 

Z 

o 

X 

Cd 

O 



.4 USTRALAS/A ILL USTRA TED. 




SIC.iniNC l.ANI). 



began to follow the Portuguese to those famous lands, and it was about this tni^e. 
in the month of June. .503. that the ship L'Espo^r, commanded by Binot Paulmyer. 
Sieur de GonneviUe. left the harbour of Honfleur. rounded the Cape of Good Hope, 

and was then driven out of her course and reckoning by 
a violent storm. The sight of birds coming from the south 
decided the Captain to sail in that direction in the hope 
of finding land where his vessel might be watered and 
repaired. The storm-worn mariners were fortunate enough 
to make a large island, which they named hides mcridi- 
oiialcs, where they stopped six months. On the refusal of 
the crew to sail further south the Captain put his ship 
about, and taking with him a young native of the country, 
steered for France, in sight of which he was lucky enough 
to arrive when, between the isles of Jersey and Guern- 
sey, an English privateer captured him and his men and 
set them ashore on the French coast. At the command 
of the Procnrair du Roi he filed a complaint before the 
French Board of Marine, on the 19th of July, 1505, which 
was signed by all his officers. This document was included 
in the memoirs of a priest, which bore the imprint of 
Cramoisy, Paris. 1663, and which were dedicated to Pope Alexander VH. This priest was 
himself descended from the native whom De GonneviUe had brought back with him and 
whom he married to one of his relations in Normandy. The priest, who claimed to be 
the great-grandson of the native, signs himself with the initials J.P.D.G. — probabh' Jean 
Paulmver de GonneviUe— Canon of the Cathedral S.P.D.L. He worked with writings 
and traditions which existed in his family relating to Binot Paulmyer's voyage, the 
logs and journals of which had fallen into the hands of the English and had never 
been recovered. The Count de Maurepas, Minister of the Admiralty of France, in- 
stituted researches in Normandy to find the original declaration of the .Sieur de 
GonneviUe, but without success, as civil wars and an interval of two hundred and fifty 
years rendered the search useless ; but the Count de Caylus ascertained that a very 
consistent tradition current in the country attested the truth of the report, and M. E. 
Marin Fa Meslee, Member of the Paris Society of Commercial Geography, gives a 
full account of this interesting incident, which i)urports to be a translation from an old 
Norman record — in all probability the very document which De Maurepas and I3e 
Caylus successively searched for in vain. 

Later maritime explorers, including Flinders, were inclined to believe that the coast 
upon which De GonneviUe landed in 1503 was not. as he supposed, Australia, but the 
island of Madagascar, fourteen hundred leagues to the west of that continent. On the 
other hand a few writers consider that the old French navigator's story is corroborated 
in some particulars by Sir George Grey in his " Journals of Two Expeditions of Dis- 
coveries in North-west and Western Australia," particularly with regard to the appearance 
of the country, and the manners and customs of the natives in the neighbourhood of 
the Glenelg and Prince Regent Rivers, between the East and West Kimberley Districts. 



EA RL } ' DISCO VERIKS. 




The whole question of the first discovery of Australia is enveloped in doubt and 
mystery. The researches of R. H. Major, of the British Museum, have from time to 
time brought to light various manuscript charts, concerning the genuineness of which 
there has been no little controversy. These maps were supposed to date from between 
151 1 to 1542, and they 
present a considerable 
body of questionable 
evidence in respect to 
an early discovery of 
Australia by the Portu- 
guese, which has given 
occasion to no end of 
incjenious theorisinof on 
the part of antiquaries 
and geographers. G. 
B. Barton, in his " His- 
tory of New South 
Wales," disposes judi- 
ciously of the question 
of an ante -historical 
visit to Australia, the 
proof of which rests on 
so slender a foundation 
as the manuscripts al- 
luded to in the follow 
ing passage, which we 
have taken the liberty 
to quote: — "To deal 
with the subject of dis- 
covery, in the darkness 
which still surrounds it, 
is hardly a less difficult 
task than that of the 
learned Burgomaster 
Witsen, when he under- 
took to write on the 
' Migrations of Man- 
kind.' We have only to 

recall the various theories with respect to the question of priority among the discoverers in 
order to see the existing state of confusion. There are at least five such theories still in 
existence: one sets up the Malays and the Chinese as the first discoverers: another the 
French ; a third, the Portuguese ; a fourth, the Spaniards : and a fifth, the Dutch. Each 
of these theories is supported b>- a great deal of argument and some evidence; but 
nothing seems to come of cither hut doubt and despair. To show how unsettled the 




m T'.A^i.i='V'i\ 



THK "nUVKIIEX" IN THE C.ULK OF C.'\KPENT.\RI.\. 



6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

question still remains, it is enough to mention that Major, in 1859. considered it highly 
probable that the Portuguese discovered the country between 151 1 and ,529, and almost 
certain that they discovered it before .542; but having found a mappemonde m the 
British Museum . two vears after^vards, he came to the conclusion that the country was 
positively discovered by the Portuguese in i6oi-the Dutch being thus summarily dis- 
possessed of an honour they had enjoyed for more than two centuries. Purther 
researches enabled the lucky discoverer of the map to satisfy himself that it was 'an 
abominable imposture," and. the laurel crown was thereupon handed back to the Dutch. 
Unfortunately, however, the detection of the imposture escaped the notice of many who 
had read the account of the map— among them being the author of a valuable work 
on the 'History of Australian Exploration,' in whose pages it appears as unquestioned 
evidence of a ' Portuguese discovery of Australia immediately preceding tlie Dutch one.' 
However interesting the point of priority may be, it is a matter of little importance 
compared with a reasonably accurate knowledge of the whole subject— for which we 
must wait until it is treated, like any other branch of inquiry, according to the critical 
methods of the present day." 

It is supposed that the survivors of the ill-fated expedition commanded by Fernando 
de Magelhaens. caught a glimpse of the' western coast during their storm-tossed wander- 
ings, but this is merely a matter of conjecture, founded, in all likelihood, upon the 
existence of an undated track chart drafted by the old Portuguese mariner who, in 
1520, sailed through the straits which bear his name into the South Seas, where, in the 
following year, he lost his life in a fight with the natives of the Philippine Islands. 

Amongst other evidences of a discovery of Australia before the close of the 
sixteenth century, besides those adduced by R. H. Major in his "Introduction" to 
•' Early Voyages to Terra Anstrah's," it is stated in Dalrymple's " Voyages and Dis- 
coveries in the South Pacific Ocean" that Juan P^rnandez — whose name is associated 
with the most popular of marine romances — was the finder of the Southern Land, and 
in an edition of Ortelius, bearing the date of 1587, a map is given showing New Guinea 
as an island separated by a strait from Terra Australis, and containing the words, 
"'Ham continentem Australem nonnnlli Magellanicam regionem. ah ejus inventorc iiuneitpani." 
V^arious editions of Mercator of about the same date give indications similar to those 
on the map of Ortelius. "In the map to illustrate the voyages of Drake and Cavendish 
{temp. Q. Elizabeth), New Guinea is an island, while Tein-a Ajtstralis, which is separated 
from it. has an outline remarkably similar to that of the Gulf of Carpentaria." 

Certain it is that as early as 1598 a distinct account of Australia, probably the 
earliest in existence, was printed at Louvain in the " Descriptionis Ptolemaico' Augnien- 
tum" of Cornelius Wytfliet. from which we quote the following: "The Australis Terra 
is the most southern of all lands, and is separated from New Guinea by a narrow 
strait. Its shores are hitherto but little known, since, after one voyage and another, 
that route has been deserted, and seldom is the country visited unless when sailors are 
driven there by storms. The Australis Terra begins at one or two degrees from the 
equator and is ascertained by some to be of so great an extent that if it were 
thoroughly explored it would be regarded as a fifth part of the world." Seventy years 
later Sir William Temple, English Ambassador to the Court of Holland, informed his 



HA RLY DISCO J'ER/HS. 



royal master that the Dutch Kast India Company had long been aware of the existence 
of a rich unknown country to the southward of Java, but fearing commercial competi- 
tion and having alre.ady more trade than it could satisfactorily protect, the knowledge 
was suppressed under threatened penalties of the severest description. 

International hatreds and jealousies were doubtless the cause of so many years of 
uncertainty as to the value of the unknown land. There was a bitter rivalry between 
the Spanish and Portugjaese ^ 
Governments for the world's 
commerce and the extension 
of their colonial possessions, 
and the famous Bull of Pope 
Alexander VL. by defining 
the different portions of the 
earth's surface in which each 
power might energetically 
prosecute maritime discovery, 
endeavoured to promote har- 
mony and avoid a cause of 
quarrel between these irascible 
nations. It is, however, more 
than probable that the peace- 
able designs of the Pontiff 
were defeated by the confi- 
guration of the globe itself, 
and that the early Portu- 
guese discoverers were appre- 
hensive that the continent 
fell within the limit of the 
Spanish boundary ; hence they 
were little inclined to lay claim 
to the honour of a discovery -^ 

the substantial benefits of which would accrue to their hated, stronger, and too often 
successful rivals. The Dutch were at war with the Spaniards, and might well have 
dreaded the possibility of having them for close neighbours in the South ; F" ranee appears 
to have had no interest in the prosecution of maritime discovery until a much later 
period, and there is no record of England having been in any way identified with the 
new Continent prior to the landing of Dampier on the north-west coast in 1688. 

In the year 1606, the expedition of De Ouiros, as he is called by the Spaniards, 
discovered the largest island of the New Hebrides Group, and supposing that this 
must be the Great Southern Land of ancient tradition, " la quai'hi parte del mundo Aus- 
trialia incognita" he bestowed upon it the name of " Tci-ra Austrialia del Espiritu 
Santo." But it is not so much as a discoverer as the apostle of discovery that De 
Quir will be remembered. In the language of W. A. Duncan in the preface to his 
translation of the " Rclacion" of "El Capitan Pedro Fernandez de Otiir" : — "It seems 




ANTU.NV \A.N IMK.MEN. 



S AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

certain that De Ouir was not the discoverer of the real continent ; that his " Ans- 
trialia del Espiritu Santo" is the largest island of the group now called the New 
Hebrides, and that the real Australian Continent had been discovered more than half 
a centur)- before his time, although, for reasons of State, its discovery was kept as far 
as possible secret. It is nevertheless true that the discoveries of De Ouir led to the 
subsequent explorations of the Dutch, of De Bougainville and of Cook, and that, in the 
words of Dalrjmple, ' The discovery of the Southern Continent, whenever and by tvhom- 
soevcr it may be completely effected, is in justice due to his immortal name.'" 

De Quiros inherited his zeal in the cause of exploration from his old leader, 
Alvaro Mendafia de Neyra, who had cruised about in these mysterious seas as early as 
1567. In that year he left Callao. and steering east discovered the Solomon Group, 
and sailed round San Christoval and other neighbouring islands. He was in the same 
latitude as the channel through which Torres afterwards worked his passage, and which 
is now named after him, and within a few days' sail of the shores of the great Aus- 
tralian Continent. Mendafia appears to have had some suspicion that greater discoveries 
than he had yet made remained behind, for in the flamboyant account of his voyage, 
which he gave the Court on his return to Spain, he made an earnest request for a 
ship to prosecute further researches. Nearly thirty years passed away before his solicita- 
tions were successful, but when at last he sailed, in 1595, he took De Quiros with him. 

Mendafia on his voyage reached the Marquesas Islands, but was unable to find the 
territories he had touched at so many years before. After much suffering and |)rivation. 
and long-continued unsuccessful search, he succumbed eventually to the anxiety and dis- 
appointment which supervened on his failure to realise his ambition, bequeathing to De 
Quiros, who succeeded him in the command of his expedition, a similar fate. 

Worn out with the hardships of the voyage, and working his vessel" with a crew of 
grisly skeletons, De Quiros at length succeeded in making Manila, the capital of the 
Philippine Islands, and undismayed by the perils of the past found his way thence to 
the Court of Spain, where he petitioned King Philip the Third to grant him men and 
ships to discover a still newer world than that given to P^erdinand and Isabella bj- 
Columbus, of whom in so singular a way he was to emulate the unfulfilled renown. 
For nearly thirty years he advocated the search for the Southern Land, and it is only 
necessarj- to read any one of the many petitions that bear his name to see how com- 
pletely he identified himself with the one great object of his life-time. He ever 
persistently maintained, and sought to prove by many arguments, that the Southern Conti- 
nent really existed. Again and again he importuned the Spanish Court to give him a 
chance, only one single chance, to make good his promises of wealth and fame, to 
present his country with a continent, and at last his importunity prevailed. 

De Quiros started for Lima with letters royal instructing Don Luis de Yelasco, the 
Viceroy of Peru, to give him men and ships, and with a letter from the Pope com- 
manding all good Christians to assist him. A year of busy preparation, and then, amid 
the ringing of bells and the prayers of the pious people of Callao, his three vessels dis- 
appeared below the western horizon to plunge among the unknown terrors of that fascina- 
ting ocean which to the old-time mariner was a limbo of all things weird or wonderful. 

Island after island is seen and named; for the first time the coral-growth is noted 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



and described; but for months no large territory looms in sight. It gladdens the anxious 
watcher's eyes at last ; some verdure-covered hills appear, which grow hourly more and 
more distinct in all their tropical luxuriance. But there is visible no landing-place upon 
that rocky shore, for even where a strip of dazzling sand is seen, overhung by palms 

and evergreen thickets, rolls a heavy surf. After standing 
outward for two days, the navigators round a bold cape 
and anchor in a wide inlet of the Bay of St. Philip and 
St. James. There, on sheltered waters fringed by a broad 

crescent of yellow beach, the ships lie 
at anchor — the Capitana, a high-pooped 
craft of ancient Spain from which Hoats 
the ensign of De Quir himself ; the 

Almiranta, or ad- 
miral's ship, the 
commander of 
which, Luis Vaez 
de Torres, is rather 
a military man than 
a sailor, and a little 
vessel to act as a za- 
hra, or tender. Not 
one of these ships 
exceeds some fifty or 
sixty tons, in our 
eyes they would be 
insignificant craft in- 
deed for so formid- 
able a service, and 
they were certainly 
wretched homes for 
crowded crews in a 
tropical climate, in 
which the air hung 
like a pall of vapour 
from the sky, and 
the pitch boiled and 
blistered in the seams 
of the deck -planks. 
It must have been 
a proud moment 
for De Quiros when he saw before him that unbroken coast stretching as far as his eye 
could range. Three days he had sailed past the hilly shores, and still an unvarying succes- 
sion of bold tree-covered slopes and verdured bluffs, and then he felt assured that the Great 
Southern Continent, his dream for nine and twenty vears, was at last in verv truth before him. 




TASMAX S CARPENTER LANDING AT STORM BAY. 



lO 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



Strong in the belief that the land they had discovered was that Terra Anstralis 
of fabled wealth, the voyagers landed and enjoyed the sight of fresh green sward and 
limpid streams. The taste of the cool rill bubbling down from the mountains must 
have been delicious to lips which for so long had been moistened only with tepid water 
from putrid barrels, in a time when the scourge of scurvy decimated the crews in a 
wholesale fashion and antiscorbutic remedies were all unknown. 

•Pleasant days were spent in this beautiful island, till Spanish arrogance disturbed the 
hannony existing between the natives and the crews. The sailors had wandered inland 
and had not conducted themselves with scrupulous propriety, whereupon an island chief, 
with perfect justice, drew upon the sand a line, and made signs warning the Spaniards 
against crossing it. Torres, in haughty defiance, accepted the challenge and stepped 
forward. At once an arrow rang on the steel corslet that covered his breast ; but the 
Spaniards had their matches ready and a volley was fired, and the chief and several 
of the natives fell. That night, either from fear of revenge or from disgust at the 
hardships of the voyage, the crew of De Quiros mutinied, silently overpowered their 
officers, weighed anchor under the cover of darkness, and when Torres looked forth 
over the faintly-lighted bay at sunrise, where three vessels had been there lay at 
anchor only two. He cruised for a week along the coast in search of the missing ship, 
and stood a long way to the south, never suspecting that his chief was being com- 
pelled by mutineers to navigate the Capitana to Mexico through all the horrors of 
thirst, famine and dissension. 

When De Quiros reached Spain he reported the discovery of a continent, to which 
he gave the high-sounding name of " Terra Aiistrialia del Espiritti Santo." Torres, 
however, knew better, for he had sailed round this land and had learnt that it was 
only an island — a large one no doubt, the largest of the group called the New 
Hebrides, but certainly not a continent. It is still known by a part of the name thus 
given to it, and in all modern maps and references appears as " Espiritii Santo." 

No longer entertaining any hope of falling in with the Capitana, Torres had to 
determine what course he should pursue. His choice was to hold to the west, not 
with the intention of making further discoveries, but in the hope of reaching the 
Philippine Islands, where, at the Spanish city of Manila, his storm-beaten craft might be 
repaired and re-victualled for the homeward voyage. 

Right in front of him stretched the long coasts of Australia and New Guinea — a 
line three thousand miles in length with only one break of a hundred miles in it all, 
yet through the very centre of that passage he steered. Thus by ill-luck, which looked 
at the moment like good fortune, Torres narrowly missed the honour of discovering the 
Great South Land. In his report he mentions that he had sailed among numerous 
islands, and that he had seen many scattered groups to the south ; it is even possible 
that he sighted the northern point of Australia, the promontory since named Cape 
York, but it would have loomed before his eyes only as another of those ocean rocks 
that studded the sea around him. Thus sailing slowly through the straits which bear 
his name, missing the main object of his voyage, much spent with toil, with ships 
sadly battered and crews worn out, Torres painfully made his way to Manila, the 
capital of Luzon, and rested for a while. Here he wrote a report of his voyage, and 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



II 



lodged a copy in the public archives of the place. What became of the original is 
uncertain, but the forgotten copy reposed unheeded beneath the accumulated dust of a 
century and a half, when the British bombarded the city in 1792, brought to light the 

ancient manuscript, 

and honoured the 

memory of the dough- 
ty Spaniard by call- 

ine the straits of his 

discovery by his 

name. This is the 

only memorial left 

us of his daring en- 
terprise, for he was 

hitherto in no way 

identified with the 

early exploration of 

that Great South 

Land which fired the 

imagination and 

baited the endeavour 

of those romantic 

old-time mariners. 
Of De Quiros it 

remains only to be 

told that after his 

miserable return to 

Mexico with the mu- 
tineers, he again re- 
paired to the Court 

of Spain, where he 

spent two years of his fast-closing life in the old, weary work of memorialising and petition- 
ing for but one single chance to finish his work. Nearly fifty memorials are said to have 
been presented by the aged navigator ere he was once more commissioned to proceed 
to America and start on another voyage. He reached Panama at last. His high hopes 
were at the point of being really consummated, and a new world seemed again about 
to be given to the haughty Don. But death cut abruptly short the gallant career 
of the old Portuguese mariner, even as the wind of favouring fortune filled the sails of 
his ships in the bay, and an unknown grave received the wasted body wherein had 
dwelt the adventurous spirit of that noble sailor Don Pedro Fernandez De Quiros, 
whose name will ever be honoured as that of the man who, through all difficulties and 
discouragements, never doubted the existence of a great Terra Australis, and who de- 
voted the best energies of his life to its discovery. Thus was brought to a dramatic 
close one of the most romantic chapters in the annals of Spanish maritime stor>'; thus 
perished the Columbus of the "New Atlantis" who, like his great prototype, was never 




WILLIAM DAMPIER. 



I 2 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



privileged to set his foot upon the land which filled his dreams and inspired his efforts. 
It was in the month of August, 1606. that Torres threaded his way through the 
intricate waters that bear his name, and curiously enough in this very same year another 
partv of Europeans, approaching from the west, saw, and even landed upon. Australian 
shores : but they also had not the least suspicion that they were looking on an unknown 
continent. It appears from a paper discovered more than a century ago, that in 1605 a 
party of Dutch sailors were sent out from Batavia to explore the coasts of New Guinea: 
for while the Spaniards had been pushing to the west from America, with Lima for their 
head-quarters, the Dutch had been steadily following their career of discovery, moving 
eastward, as the Council of the Indies at Batavia were determined to lose no oppor- 
tunity of securing for their newly-born republic as much of these unknown lands 
as they could discover and appropriate. 

The little vessel the Duyfhcn, or Dove, was therefore despatched to examine New 
Guinea. She sailed along the southern shore of that island till early in 1606 she reached 
the ver>' strait which Torres, only two or three months distant, was approaching from 
the opposite direction. At this point her commander, whose name is unknown to history, 
must have been deceived by bad weather, which made him fancy that the line of islets 
so thickly studding the passage was a continuous coast. He steered steadily northward 
till he reached Cape York Peninsula, when thinking himself still upon the shores of New 
Guinea, he sailed into the great opening now called the Gulf of Carpentaria. His men 
landed near a low point of red sandy bluffs, but in the attempt to penetrate the man- 
grove swamps that fringed the shore they were attacked by ferocious blacks and several 
were killed. The Dutchmen do not appear to have thirsted very ardently for further 
discoveries, for they named this ill-fated point Cape " Keer-iuccr" or "Turn-again." made 
sail, and stood out for sea on their return voyage. Their discovery was of no value, as 
they themselves never suspected its importance, and not until nearly two centuries had 
elapsed did its real significance become known. 

During the next forty years the Dutch sent from Batavia a succession of small ex- 
peditions. Besides these voyages, intended expressly for discovery, several navigators 
wandered or were driven so far out of their course as accidentally to sight the Australian 
.Shore, and in this manner the northern and western coasts gradually became known. 

In 1616, Captain Dirk Hartog. Hertoge or Hartighs. in the ship Ecndraght, whilst 
voyaging from Amsterdam to Bantam made the west coast of the Continent, landing on 
the island which has since received his name, where he left a metal plate bearing a 
record of the discovery. This was found about eighty years afterwards by Captain 
Vlamingh of the Gcelvink, who transferred the inscription to a second plate of metal and 
added thereto an account of his own voyage. In 1801. Captain Hamelin, of the French 
ship Naturaliste, found this plate and re-erected it on a new post. 

In 1622, the Dutch ship Leeiiwhu or Lioness, discovered the reef on the west coast 
known as Houtman's Abrolhos, where seven years later Francis Pelsart was wrecked in 
the Batavia, and in the year following the Leeuwins visit the yachts Pcra and Arnhem 
were sent from Amboina to explore the coast previously discovered by the Duyfhcn. 
Captain Jan Carstens of the Arnhan was, with many of the crew, murdered by the New 
Guinea blacks, but the voyage was continued and several landings effected on the shores 



£A RL Y DISCO VERIES. 



13 



of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Another expedition sailed from Banda in April, 1629, con- 
sisting of the yachts Klyn, Amsterdam and Wczcl under Captain Gerrit Tomaz Pool, or 
Poel, who was also murdered by the natives on the New Guinea Coast ; the subsequent 
discoveries were prosecuted without any competent supervision, and after landing at a few 
points of Arnhem's Land the ships returned— nevertheless the complete examination of 
the Gulf of Carpentaria was the outcome of this voyage. Thus were the western coasts 




A MALAY PROA IN THE GULF OF CARPENTARIA. 



mapped out, mainly in a rough and ready fashion, by the masters of the Dutch vessels 
which on their way from Europe to the West Indies had been swept out of their 
courses by storms, as well as by those who had made special voyages of discovery. 

The Commander of the Guide Zeepaard had in the meantime accidentally made the 
south coast, and sailing along it for many hundreds of miles bestowed upon it the name 
of Nuyts Land — the Pieter Nuyts associated with this voyage being, in the opinion of 
R. H. Major, not the captain of the ship, but perhaps the Company's first merchant on 
board. He was most likely a civilian, as Flinders notes that he was afterwards made 
Governor of Formosa. Many other vessels, including the Mauritius, an outward bound 
ship which appears to have made some discoveries upon the west coast in July, 161 8, 
the Vianen of De Witt, and the Batavia of Pelsart had also visited the Australian 
Coast at various points, but all their reports were unfavourable, both with regard to the 
nature of the country and the characteristics of the inhabitants. 

The visit of Pelsart, in 1629, is interesting from the fact that he was probably the 
first of his countrymen to bring back to Europe anything like an authentic account of the 
western coast of Australia. He .sailed from Texel on the 28th of October, 1628, having 



,4 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

under his command ten ships besides his own. which was named the Batavia, and they 
were all fitted out by the Dutch East India Company. On the 4th of June in the follow- 
ing year, he was separated from his fleet by a storm, and driven on the shoals which 
are now marked on the maps as the Abrolhos of Frederic Houtman, lying in latitude 
twenty-eight degrees south, and named after Houtman of Alkmaer, who commanded a 
fleet of Dutch East Indiamen in 161 8. When the Batavia, which had upwards of two 
hundred and thirty men on board, struck upon these banks there was no land visible, 
but an island about the distance of three leagues, and a few rocks which were nearer 
to hand. On these the greater part of the crew were landed, together with the most 
valuable portion of the cargo and the ship's water, of which there was none to be 
found on any of the islands. The scarcity of this article and the complaints of his 
company obliged Pelsart, rather against his will, to set out in the skiff and attempt to 
procure water from some of the neighbouring islands, leaving his lieutenant and seventy 
of his men still aboard the ship, and in danger of perishing along with her. 

Pelsart coasted the islands with the greatest care, but found in most of them that 
the rain water in the holes of the rocks was so mingled with sea water as to be 
totally unfit for use. Obliged, therefore, to go further, he soon had sight of the main- 
land, which seemed to be about sixteen miles north-by-west from the place where the 
Batavia had struck. The day following he continued his quest, sailing sometimes north, 
sometimes west, but the land appeared low and naked, and the shore excessively rocky 
and uninviting. For two days the shipwrecked mariners steered on a northerly course 
amid rough and tempestuous weather, the sea running so high as to make it impos- 
sible for them to effect a landing. 

As they proceeded on their voyage the land trended away to the north-east, and 
the coast seemed to be but one continuous rock, remarkably level at the top and of a 
reddish colour, against which the sea broke with such impetuosity as to make it ex- 
tremely dangerous to attempt a landing. In twenty-four degrees south latitude, as 
Pelsart and his men were sailing slowly along the coast, they perceived in the distance 
a great deal of smoke, and rowed towards it with the utmost of their power in the hope of 
finding inhabitants and, as a consequence, water. Approaching the shore, however, the 
rocks were found so steep and jagged, and the surf so violent, that any attempt to 
effect a landing appeared the height of fool-hardiness. Thereupon six of the skiff's crew, 
trusting to their skill as swimmers, leapt overboard, and were fortunate enough to reach 
land, where they spent the whole day in searching for water. They saw four natives, 
who came very close to them, but upon one of the Dutch sailors advancing they ran 
away with the utmost precipitance. These people are naively described as black savages, 
and quite naked, not having so much as a covering about their middle. Relinquishing 
all hope of finding water on this barren and uninviting coast, the men swam on board 
again, much injured by the surf dashing them upon the rocks, and Pelsart weighed 
anchor and continued on his course, trusting to find a better landing-place. 

On the morning of the seventh day since they quitted the Batavia they discovered 
a cape, from the extreme points of which ran a ridge of rocks a mile into the sea, 
and behind it lay a second ridge. The sea being calm they ventured in between, but 
found no passage. Towards noon another opening appeared which they attempted, being 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



15 



this time successful. On landing they set immediately to work digging wells in order to 
procure fresh water, but what they succeeded in getting was again so brackish that they 
were unable to drink it, although ready to famish through excessive thirst. Ultimately 
they discovered rain water in the hollows of the rocks, which was an inexpressible relief 
to men who had for some days existed on an allowance of a pint apiece. 

Near the place where Pelsart and his crew landed was a large heap of ashes and 
the remains of some cray-fish, and from this they very reasonably concluded that a party 




CAPE TRIBULATION, NORTH-EASTERN COAST OK AUSTRALIA. 



of natives had lately been upon the spot. The country, however, appeared so barren 
and unpromising that, although anxious to collect all the knowledge their circumstances 
would admit of, they felt by no means allured far from the coast ; indeed, the part of 
the Continent upon which they had landed is described by Pelsart as a thirsty, parched, 
barren plain, covered with ant-hills, so high that at a distance they looked like the huts 
of negroes, and the air was infested with such multitudes of flies that the Dutchmen 
were scarcely able to keep themselves clear of them. 

As the sailors explored this arid land they saw eight more natives, who appeared 
at a distance, each with a staff in his hand, and advanced until they were within 
musket-shot ; but as soon as Pelsart's company moved forward to meet them, like those 
whom the sailors had first seen, they fled at the top of their speed. 

The Commodore, entertaining no hope of procuring water, or of entering into 
correspondence with the inhabitants, resolved to go on board and continue his course 
northward, trusting to good fortune to find the river of Jacob Remmescens in De Witt's 
Land ; the wind, however, veered about to the north-east, and he was no longer able 
to follow the trend of the coast, and reflecting that they were now one hundred and 
twenty leagues from Houtman's Shoals, with scarcely enough water to serve them during 
the passage back, he came to a resolution to make the best of his way to Batavia, acquaint 
the Governor-General with the misfortunes which had befallen his ship and his crew, 
and obtain such assistance as he could procure for their relief. Pelsart's description of 
this part of the Australian Coast agrees substantially with that given by Dampier, who 
landed somewhere near the same spot sixty years later. 

In 1642, Abel Janszen Tasman entered on the work of discovery, being placed by 
Antony Van Diemen in command of an expedition commissioned to search for new lands 



,6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

in the Southern Ocean. Van Diemen. in the year 1637, had been appointed by the Dutch 
as their Governor-General in the East Indies, and although no navigator himself he was 
the cause of much exploratory navigation by others. Shortly before he set sail from 
Europe to take up his work of administering the affairs of Asiatic Holland, it so happened 
that there had been published at Frankfort an account in Latin of the voyages of De 
Quires, It cannot be doubted that Van Diemen knew of this, and being enterprising and 
ambitious, was resolved to signalize his period of government by the further exploration 
of this dreamt-of Southern Continent, and it is from an account of what the Dutch had 
already done in these waters up to the time of Tasman's second voyage, which Van 
Diemen caused to be drawn up, and which curiously enough, was discovered only a 
century ago, that we have derived our meagre account of the Diiyfhcti and the other 
Dutch ships which at various times explored small portions of the coast. 

On the 14th of August, 1642, there set sail from Batavia two clumsy vessels, with 
high square sterns, and sides bulging out prodigiously at the water-line, manned by 
stolidly unromantic Dutch sailors who could at least be relied upon to do their duty. 
These vessels were the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen, of the expedition fitted out by 
Antony \^an Diemen, and commanded by Abel Janszen Tasman, and their mission was 
the quest of a continent. At first they sailed south-west to the Mauritius, then turning 
to the south-east, and encountering on their way the chilly storms from the South Pole, 
they penetrated to latitude fifty degrees ; but they found no signs of a continent in 
these seas, so Tasman shaped his course eastward, inclining slightly north along a line 
that brought him in sight of a bold shore, rising a little way inland into rugged hills, 
and behind these into deep blue mountains. As the vessels approached, Tasman, repeat- 
ing the experience of De Quiros off the island of Espiritu Santo, could see no pros- 
pect of a landing-place on that iron-bound coast ; he therefore headed southwards and 
followed the shore-line, which soon trended to the north-east. After a day or two he 
found himself .sailing between the beautiful shores of a spacious bay, and had .some 
hope of landing and finding fresh water ; but as his vessels entered the weather 
thickened, and in a fierce hurricane they were for three days driven out to sea. When 
the gale moderated they again stood in to the land, and anchored in an arm of the inlet 
they had previously attempted, to which Tasman gave the name of Storm Bay. The 
coast was well timbered, and rose before the voyagers in picturesque masses of great 
forest-clad mountains. Two boats' crews well armed were sent on shore, and cautiously 
explored the margin of the dense forest — in all probability the first Europeans who 
ever trod the lovely fern-carpeted glades of Tasmania. 

They did not meet any natives, but they heard voices and other sounds ; and on 
some of the trees, the smooth white trunks of which rose to a great height, they saw 
notches cut at intervals of five feet, evidently for the convenience of a climber. Having 
no knowledge of the manner in which opossums were caught by the natives, the Dutch- 
men concluded that these must be a giant people whose strides were five feet in 
length. Next day some men were seen through the haze on a rocky promontory, and 
the fears of the crews magnified these inoffensive blacks into the sons of Anak they 
had already imagined them to be. The ceremony of taking possession of the land had 
not yet been performed, and no one seemed particularly anxious to make the personal 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



17 




THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN BARRIER REEF. 



acquaintance of these monsters; but one man, Tasman's carpenter, was hardy enough to 
enter the surf, bearing in his hand a pole from which floated, the flag of the Nether- 
lands. This he stuck into the sand, thereby taking possession of one of the most 
lovely islands of the Southern Hemisphere, on which neither he nor his fellows again 
.set foot, and which his countrymen made not the least efi'ort to colonize. 

Tasman gave the name of his patron to the coast he had discovered, and for 
many years it was known to maritime history as Van Diemen's Land. He did not, 
however, know that it 
was an island. He was 
content with what he 
had seen, and held on 
his course to the east, 
where he became the 
first discoverer of New 
Zealand and many 
smaller islands ; then 
turning homewards he 
reached Batavia, after 
an absence of nearly 
ten months. He was 
probably the first to 

chart the Australasian coasts from actual observation ; but the ungenerous policy of his 
countrymen left all the work to be done over again by subsequent voyagers. 

In 1644, V'an Diemen once more sent out an expedition under Tasman, consisting of 
three vessels, the Linimcn, the Zeemeuw, and the tender, Dc Braak — the express objects 
of the voyage being an examination of the northern shores of New Holland. So secret, 
however, were the movements of the Dutch that we know very little of the results, 
although we can follow Tasman's track in the names Linimen Bight, " Sweer's " and 
" Maria " Islands, and other geographical appellations in the Gulf of Carpentaria, which 
identify him with at least one portion of the work he was sent out to perform. 
Indeed, Major gives the credit of the discovery of the Gulf of Carpentaria to Tasman, 
who in all probability named it after Pieter Carpenter, Governor-General of the Company 
of the Indies between the years 1623 and 1627, who returned to Europe in 1628 with 
seven vessels, one of which was the famed I'ianen, commanded in all likelihood by that 
De Witt whose name is borne by a portion of the northern coast. At any rate Tas- 
man's narrative of this voyage, although not published, must, in the opinion of Major, 
have been in existence, as Burgomaster Witsen in a work on the migrations of the 
human race, which appeared in 1705, gives some notes on the inhabitants of New Guinea 
and New Holland, and in these Tasman is quoted among those from whom he gained his 
information, and it is the outline of the coasts visited in this voyage which is repre- 
sented in the mosaic map laid down, in 1648, on the floor of the Groote Zaal of the 
Stad-huys of Amsterdam. In the meantime the territory had been claimed by the Dutch 
under the name of New Holland, but no effort was made to utilize the discovery, and 
nearly half a century passed before attention was again directed to it. 



,8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

With the exception of Francis Pelsart, the first voyager to publish any authentic 
information about the main-land of Australia was William Dampier, an Englishman, whose 
first visit was of a singular character. He had been for many years leading a roving 
life among the West Indies, when an old friend of his, named Captain Swan, arrived 
on the Brazilian coast in the Cygnet, a vessel fitted out by some London merchants for 
the South American trade, and Dampier joined him as supercargo. 

These seas were then swarming with buccaneers, and the Spaniards in their suspi- 
cion would not suffer the Cygnet to approach their towns, much less to engage with 
them in commerce. The crew became restless and mutinied. They resolved to become 
buccaneers also, and rob the Spaniards, with whom they could not trade. Swan consented 
to retain the command if the men were willing to allow his employers a share of the 
spoils, and so they began a plundering career all over the high seas, in the course of 
which they reached the Philippine Islands. Swan and the more orderly part of the crew 
soon wearied of the life that their dissolute comrades were leading, and these, in 
their turn, regarded them with contempt. The result was that the disgusted Commander 
and forty of his company were landed on the Philippine Islands, and there left to shift 
for themselves ;. but Dampier, having no wish to fall into the hands either of Spaniards 
or of Malays, remained on board, and awaited a better opportunity to escape from his 
uncongenial comrades and return to his native land. 

After her long cruise the Cygnet badly needed overhauling, but the crew dared not 
approach any settlement for the purpose. They accordingly fixed on New Holland, and 
on the 4th of January, 1688, entered an inlet on the north-west coast, warped the vessel 
up into shallow water, and on the fall of the tide had the satisfaction of seeing her 
high and dry, a full half-mile from the water's edge. They then pitched tents on shore 
and dug a well, as no surface water was to be found, and set to work to repair their 
battered vessel and renew their supply of water. They were ten weeks on that inhospi- 
table shore, hard at work cleaning the ship's bottom and generally overhauling her, but 
Dampier, who had little communication with his privateering companions, spent a great 
deal of his time in quiet examination of the surrounding country. When they again set 
sail he resolved to leave them at the first opportunity, and with two others was put 
ashore at the Nicobar Islands, from which, after many adventures, he reached Sumatra, 
and thence obtained a passage to Europe. His buccaneering comrades met with no <rreat 
luck. The Cygnet became a floating pandemonium, and after tossing about until she was 
rotten, sank at her moorings in a lonely harbour in Madagascar. 

Dampier found on his arrival in England that, during his absence, James II. had 
retired to France, and that William III., Prince of Orange, was reignincr in his stead. 
This sovereign took the greate.st possible interest in the two volumes of travels that 
Dampier published, and showed it in an eminently practical manner by sending him 
out with a small vessel, the Roeduek, to solve the problem as to whether this New 
Holland was really a continent or only an archipelago. 

He sailed with fifty men and provisions for a long voyage, and on the ist of 
August. 1699, again sighted the north-west coast of Australia, and anchored in a fine 
inlet, to which he gave the name of Shark Bay. Five days spent in looking for water 
and digging wells gave no result, and they were glad to start on their cruise along 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



19 



the coast. They sailed a thousand miles and often landed, but only once obtained fresh 
water. Then, in order to ascertain where springs or running streams might be found, 
they tried, but unsuccessfully, to catch one or two of the natives, who were too shy to 
come within speaking distance. To Dampier it seemed that a longer stay on this 
desolate coast would be wholly fruitless ; he considered that he had discovered the most 
miserable spot on the face of the earth, and therefore continued his course along the 

shores of New Guinea, 
and among the adjacent 
islands. However, the 
prevalence of scurvy on 
board, and a sickness 
which attacked Dampier 
himself, induced him to begin his 
homeward passage; but at the island 
of Ascension the Roebuck went ashore 
and became a total wreck, and all 
the relics of the voyage were lost. 

The shipwrecked crew were res- 
cued by an English vessel after having 
been five weeks on the island, and 
upon their arrival in England, Dampier 
published a full account of the voy- 
age and dedicated it to his patron, 
.the Earl of Pembroke. He received 
no acknowledgement of his services, 
and he has no historical record after 
this date, but he is said to have been 
connected with the expedition of 
Woodes Rodgers which, in 1 709, rescued Alexander Selkirk, the prototype of De Foe's 
immortal "Robinson Crusoe," from his solitary exile on the island of Juan Fernandez. 

Dampier's discoveries added considerably to the knowledge of geography, but they 
did not settle the problem of the Great South Land ; and the report he took back of 
this poverty-stricken country and its wretched inhabitants deterred the seamen or the 
Governments of Europe from further investigations. His works were eagerly read, but 
when the public saw, among the glowing and picturesque accounts of the tropical 
regions and the lovely islands of the South that he had visited, this uninviting descrip- 
tion of the north-west coast of Australia, curiosity was satisfied, and for seventy years 
the exploration of the newly-found Continent was practically at an end. 

Between Dampier's first and second voyages an accident caused a close investigation 
of the western coasts to be made by the Dutch. In 1684 the Riddcrschap had sailed 
from Holland, rounded the Cape, and had never afterwards been heard of. She had on 
board many passengers and a valuable cargo ; and in 1696 the East India Company 
ordered Commander Vlamingh, when on his way out to Batavia, to examine the coasts 
of Australia, and to discover if by some chance the crew might still be living there. 




A NORTH AU.STRALIAN NATIVE. 



20 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



He entered a stream which, on account of its numerous black swans, was called Swan 
River, and here he landed with eighty-eight men, and marched fifty miles inland, but he 
neither saw nor heard anything of the missing crew. He then sailed northward, creeping 
slowly along the shore and putting off boats to examine every likely inlet, yet dis- 
covering no trace of the missing ship. At last he anchored in Shark Bay, just two 
years before the arrival of Dampier. He there thought that a clue to the lost ship and 
crew was discovered, but it turned out to be merely a post on which was nailed a 
plate containing the information that Dirk Hartog had landed there in 1616 — about 
eighty years before. The extreme sterility of all this part of the coast made it impos- 
sible that the Dutchmen could have lived on it for twelve years, and so the Commander 
abandoned his search, and from the North West Cape shaped his course for Batavia ; but 
with him he took charts that added to the knowledge of the western coast of Australia. 

Henceforth the Southern Ocean and its lands became better and better known. Anson, 
Byron, Wallis, and Carteret; De Boungainville, La Perouse and D'Entrecasteaux sailed hither 
and thither. Vain dreams and vague theories of sunset archipelagoes and ice-bound 
Southern Continents filled men's minds and urged them outward bound. In the eloquent 
words of Besant : — " The English brain was fired with the thought of the Pacific as in 
Queen Elizabeth's time it had been fired with the thought of the West Indies. Reports 
came home of lovely islands ; the English, though as yet they knew nothing of Hawaii 
or Tahiti, had heard of Juan Fernandez and Masafuera ; they had read the voyages of 
Woodes Rogers, of Clipperton and Shelvocke ; with Anson they had visited the lovely 
Tinian, with its strange avenues of pillars ; they knew of the Galapagos, the sea-lions of 
California, the Spice Islands and the Ladrones, the Tierra del Fuego and its miserable 
people. The long smouldering theory of the Southern Continent revived again. Scientific 
men proved beyond a doubt that the right balance of the globe required a Southern 
Continent ; otherwise it would of course tip over. Geographers pointed out how Ouiros, 
Juan Fernandez and Tasman had all touched at various points of that Continent. Men 
of imagination spoke of treasures of all kinds which would be found there, and would 
belong to the nation which should discover and annex this land ; they laid it down on 
the maps and reckoned up the various kinds of climate which would be enjoyed in a 
country stretching from the Southern Pole through forty degrees of latitude. The most 
extravagant ideas were formed of what might be found, fictitious travels fed the imagi- 
nation of the people ; men confidently looked forward to acquiring a prolonged rule over 
other golden lands, such as had been for nearly three hundred years the making and 
the unmaking of Spain. In every age there is always a grasping after what seems to 
promise the sovereignty of the world. In every age there is a Carthage to be destroyed ; 
and in every age there are half a dozen countries each of which is eager and anxious 
to enact the part of Rome. Such is, in brief outline, the story many times told but 
always new, of the principal voyages of discovery on the great Pacific Ocean." 

Up to the time of Cook one name stands forth among the names of those who 
.sought a Southern Continent. In the history of maritime exploration and discovery in 
connection with Australia undoubtedly the romantic figure of De Ouiros looms forth in 
proportions which dwarf the long succession of mariners whom chance or misfortune cast 
upon the shores of that land of which he is the apostle. It is true that the actual 



EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



21 




32 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TEA TED. 



territory which he discovered and named "Austrmlia del Espiritti Santo" was not the con- 
tinent of his dreams. But his expedition led the way in which the navigators of the 
future were to follow, and the subsequent discoveries of De Bougainville, of Cook and others 
were but the fulfillment of the great scheme which he first definitely elaborated. His 
expedition was no mere blundering cruise of irresponsible adventure, but a voyage as 
expressly undertaken for a distinct object as that of the discoverer of America. The 
Duyfhen had indeed touched at Australian soil, and so by the hap-hazard of an accident 
arrived at the reality that De Ouiros was never to know that he had missed. But such 
a circumstance cannot detract from the merit of the work of a whole life-time, or deprive 
the old Portuguese pilot of the honour he so gallantly earned. Subsequent expeditions 
of the Dutch gave them a right to the possession of the -Continent they named New 
Holland, and in neglecting it they merely followed the example of the Spanish Court 
which so long turned a deaf ear to the remonstrances of De Ouiros. The Continent 
thus remained open for exploitation for rather more than a century and a half after this 
period, and so far as any immediate result of the discovery of De Quiros was concerned, 
his enterprise was but thrown away on the master he served. 

It is, however, to the mariners of Holland and to William Dampier that Europe 
owes her first authentic knowledge of the Great South Land ; but it is to the labours 
of James Cook that we are indebted for its actual settlement, for he only, amongst all 
who had touched at its shores, brought back any report which was not either alarming 
or discouraging of savage natives or of sterile coasts. 





CAPTAIN COOK. 

IRST among the names of the mariners whom England delights 
to honour stands that of James Cook. His advent 
, upon the field of maritime discovery marks the era 

of definite knowledge in regard to the Great Southern 
Continent, of which, hitherto, only the haziest notions 
had prevailed. Other navigators had landed on its 
shores, but to him belongs the credit of first attract- 
ing attention to its possible value for settlement, and 
of navigating and charting its eastern coast-line. With 
the exception of Tasman's solitary landing-place in 
Storm Bay, all Australia that had hitherto been seen 
was said to be bare and forbidding in the extreme. 
Cook was not only the first to see, he was the first 
also to describe some of its many beauties, the first 
to grasp the national significance of the discovery, 
and the first to claim it as a British possession. 
For nearly seventy years from the beginning of 
the eighteenth century the world's available knowledge of Australia may be said to have 
been limited to the information contained in the " Relation " of De Quiros, the published 
accounts of the voyages of Dampier, the Dutch official reports, and some speculative 
references to the unexplored mysteries of the Southern Ocean in the writings of certain 
old geographers. The collections of voyages published by Harris, Callander, De Brosses 
and Dalrymple embody the greater part of this information up to about the period of 
the revival of British interest in the subject. Dampier came again in 1710, and the 
French navigators, De Bougainville and De Surville, were in Australian waters in the 
years 1768 and 1769. The name "Australia" had not yet been' definitely applied to 
the territory which the Dutch had named New Holland, and the unknown lands about 
the South Pole were still designated by the name of Terra Aiistralis Incognita, or, as 
in the map of Descelliers, La Terra AiistraHc. Nearly the whole of the eastern coast 
had been left unexplored, but the time had now come when almost by an accident the 
Continent was to be thrown open to scientific exploration and to settlement by the enter- 
prise of a British navigator, in a manner at once decisive and final. 

English interest in the work of -South Pacific exploration revived after the peace of 
1763, and the voyages of Wallis and Carteret were the first fruits of the re-awakening. 
These navigators had not yet returned when the Royal Society began to move in the 
matter of having an expedition fitted out to observe a transit of Venus which had been 
calculated for the year 1 769, and which could be best observed from some station in 
the South Pacific. On Wallis's return he reported that the island of Otaheite was the 



24 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



was 



most suitable point of view for the purpose, and the Royal Society was urgent in 
dwelling upon the necessity for taking advantage of this opportunity to calculate for the 
f^rst time the distance of the earth from the sun. 

The Government was induced to make the enterprise a national one, and no time 
lost after its willingness was intimated to the Royal Society in April, 1768, in 

preparing the expedi- 
tion for its work. The 
com m a n d was fi rst 
offered to Dalrymple, 
whose astronomical 
knowledge, as well as 
his labours in the cause 
of South Pacific explo- 
ration, readily distin- 
guished him for the 
service. But a difficulty 
was caused by a demand 
on his part for a brevet 
commission as captain 
of the vessel, and during 
the delay which ensued 
the Secretary to the 
Admiralty spoke to the 
Board of the 
qualifications of 
a certain master in the 
Navy named James 
Cook, who had already 
distinguished himself 
by his services. 

James Cook was 
born at Marton, a little 
village in that part of Yorkshire known as Cleveland, on the 27th of October, 1728 His 
father was an agricultural labourer of Scotch descent, afterwards a landlord's hind, and 
subsequently a stone-mason ; his mother, of like humble origin, was a Yorkshire woman, 
and the surroundings of the future discoverer of Eastern Australia were as rude as his 
education was rudimentary. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to one Sanderson, 
a shop-keeper in the fishing town of The Staithes, who combined the commercial func- 
tions of draper and grocer to the sturdy fisher-folk who braved the midnight perils of 
the German Ocean and plied their calling whilst others slept. Of course, a boy cannot 
live within sound of the sea, and in daily intercourse with those whose bronzed faces 
are flecked with salt crystals and whose very words give off an odour of ocean, without 
becoming terribly discontented with a life prospect of sugar-weighing and flannel-measuring ; 
so it was not very long before young Cook stole away between a sunset and a sunrise, 




SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 




A MOUNTAIN GORGE ON THE NEW ZEALAND COAST. 



CAPTAIN COOK. 25 

and followed in the wake of apprentices innumerable since the first boy broke away 
from the bonds of leaden usage and dull plenty for the coarse fare and the long hours, 
the hardships and the dangers and adventures of the deep. 

Cook succeeded in realizing the wish of his heart. He re-appears as a ship's boy 
on board a collier belonging to a Whitby firm, but he did not spend all his time in 
trading up and down the coast, for he spoke afterwards to Forster, the botanist, of his 
voyages to Norway. At the age of twenty-seven he held a mate's certificate, and in 
that capacity he acted until the year 1755, when war broke out between England and 
France, and the press-gangs actively bestirred themselves in running down merchant 
sailors with whom to man His Majesty's ships. Now those employed on board the 
colliers regularly trading between Newcastle and London were smart sailors, and thus 
became the natural and desirable prey of that terrible institution. Cook, who had no 
particular ties to bind him to the coal trade, thought it wiser to enlist willingly as a 
volunteer than to be dragged on board a man-o'-war against his will. The Eagle, of 
sixty guns, lay at her moorings off Wapping Old Stairs, and thither he repaired in 
order to enter the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman under Captain John Hamer, who 
was six months afterwards succeeded by Sir Hugh Palliser, in whom Cook subsequently 
found an active and a trenuine friend. 

Four years spent by Australia's greatest navigator as an ordinary sailor largely 
developed both his powers of endurance and his knowledge of practical seamanship, and 
when, in 1759, at the solicitation of Mr. Osbaldiston, Member for Scarborough, and by 
Captain Palliser's support, he was raised to the rank of master, he was found to be 
fully equal to the demands of the ofifice. He was first appointed to the Grampus, but 
when it was discovered that the former master had returned to his ship, Cook was 
transferred to the Garland. The Garland had, however, already sailed, and Cook 
ultimately secured his master's rating in the Mercury, destined for service in North 
American waters, in conjunction with the other ships of the fleet under the command of 
Sir Charles Saunders. 

At that time the famous expedition of General Wolfe was lying at the mouth of 
the St. Lawrence, waiting for that opportunity which came at last on the Heights 
of Abraham, when Wolfe and Montcalm met in the deadly struggle which ended in the 
capture of Quebec. The Mercury had no sooner arrived at her destination than she 
was placed under orders to join the fleet, which was then co-operating with the land 
forces under General Wolfe. However, nothing could be done against Quebec, which 
was the principal object of attack, until a careful survey of the river had been made, 
so that when the flght began the heavy ships might take up positions in front of the town 
without delay, and yet without danger of stranding. 

To take soundings within cannon-range of the enemy was a dangerous task, requir- 
ing skill, nerve, and presence of mind, as well as a special knowledge of the work to 
be performed, and it speaks eloquently in Cook's favour that he was recommended 
for such perilous duty by his constant friend. Captain Palliser. Under cover of night, 
for several nights in succession. Cook stole cautiously up the St. Lawrence, with oars 
muffled and every man on the alert, and there, under the very guns of the city, and 
actually within ear-shot of the sentry's challenge, he silently performed his task and 



25 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

retired before morning. At length he was discovered, and a number of canoes manned 
by Indians were ambuscadoed in a wood by the waterside, and launched at night-time 
for the purpose of surrounding him and cutting off his retreat. On this occasion he 
had a close shave. He was obliged to run for it and make the island of Orleans, where 
he landed near the guard of the English hospital. Kippis, who gives a graphic account 
of the incident, says that "some of the Indians entered at the stern of the boat as 
Mr. Cook leaped out at the bow ; and the boat, which was a barge belonging to one 
of the ships of war, was carried away in triumph." The work Cook was chosen to 
perform was, however, practically finished, and when the English ships moved to the attack 
the Admiral had abundant information as to the waters in which it was necessary to operate 

a knowledge which greatly contributed to the subsequent success of the attack upon the 

city. Kippis writes, " Sir Hugh Palliser has good reason to believe that before this time 
Mr. Cook had scarcely ever used a pencil, and that he knew nothing of drawing. But 
such was his capacity that he speedily made himself master of every object to which 
he applied his attention." 

In the September following the capture of Quebec by the English forces, Cook was 
transferred from the Mercury to the Northumberland, a first-rate man-o'-war, and the 
Admiral's flag-ship. Walter Besant, in his life of Cook, says: "They wintered at Halifax; 
during the winter Cook is said to have first begun the study of geometry, mathematics, 
and astronomy. The amount of mathematics required for the practice of marine survey- 
ing, taking observations, making charts, calculating latitudes and longitudes is not very 
considerable ; but that a man should actually begin the study of mathematics after 
thirty, and after performing surveys and making charts, can hardly be believed. That 
Cook spent a laborious winter working at those branches of mathematical science which 
are concerned with navigation, that he advanced himself considerably, and that he 
brought a clear head and a strong will to the work, may be and must be believed." 

In the autumn of 1762 the Northumberland returned to England, and on the 21st 
of December of that year Cook was married at Barking, in Essex, to a Miss Elizabeth 
Batts, by whom he had six children. Four months after his marriage he was sent by 
the Admiralty to survey the islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, which had been ceded 
to the French by the Treaty of Peace, and which they were about to occupy. This work 
finished, he again returned to England. Early in 1 764 Cook's services were once more 
put in requisition in North America, for his friend Sir Hugh Palliser, now Governor and 
Commodore of Newfoundland and Labrador, offered him an appointment as marine sur- 
veyor of those shores, an appointment which Cook accepted. He was put in command 
of the schooner Grenville, and sailed in April for his station. The work, which he per- 
formed with characteristic thoroughness and ability, lasted until the year 1767. Cook did 
not, however, remain on his station the whole time, for he sailed to England every 
autumn, and returned to Newfoundland with the spring. While engaged as a marine 
surveyor he did not neglect his other scientific studies, as is amply attested by a paper 
of his entitled "An Observation of an Eclipse of the Sun at the Island of Newfoundland, 5th 
August, 1 766," which constituted the basis of some important scientific work. Walter Besant 
enthusiastically observes, " There were not many officers in the Royal Navy of that time who 
were capable of taking such -an observation, or of making any deductions from it." 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



27 



Cook had completely finished his work by the year 1767, when happened the great 



tide in his affairs that led to fortune, 
would, in 1 769, pass across the disc of 
the sun, and as only two such pheno- 
mena occur in a hundred and twenty 
years, it was deemed advisable to ob- 
tain the best possible observation of the 
occurrence. Now the best possible ob- 
servation of the transit was to be 
obtained from some place in the Pacific 
Ocean, and astronomers represented that 
if the planet's path were accurately 
observed it would be possible for the 
first time to deduce approximately the 
distance of the earth from the sun. Of 
course the scientific world was consider- 
ably exercised, and the Royal Society 
petitioned the King to make the obser- 
vation of the transit a national under- 
taking. The petition was successful, the 
Government acceded, and preparations 
were immediately begun. The man who 
could have led the expedition, Alexander 
Dalrymple, geographer and scientist, was 
set aside, because he wanted to command 
the ship as well as to observe the tran- 
sit. Cook happened to be on the spot, 
as well as to be the only man who, as 
a practical seaman, possessed scientific 
attaimnents which were at all adequate to 
the requirements of the mission to be 
undertaken. Besant puts the case very 
concisely in the following passage : — 
" Mr. Dalrymple first refused to go at 
all, and then wanted to go ; and finally, 
when it was too late, seems to have 
sulked, and ever afterwards complained 
that he had been badly treated by the 
Admiralty. They then cast about for an 
ofificer who could not only command the 
ship but also conduct the scientific pur- 
pose of the expedition. No other man 
could be found than James Cook, 
Master in the Royal Navy. Everything 



According to astronomical calculations, Venus 






\ 


1'.,: 


': 



< 

< 

H 
to 

D 
< 

O 

< 
O 

u 

z 

< 



o 

a 
as 



< 

■■J 



28 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




CAPTAIN COOK S PIGEON-HOUSE. 



happened fortunately and opportunely for him ; he had just returned from the important post of 
Surveyor of Newfoundland and Labrador; he was therefore available, and on the spot. He 
had brought himself into great notice by his admirable charts, and he was well recommended 
by ever)- ofificer under whom he had served. It is indeed most probable that no other ofificer 
in the Navy possessed so much scientific knowledge as Cook. To have mastered the whole 
art of navigation, with the methods and tactics of naval warfare in all its branches, was 
then considered an education sufficient for the best and most ambitious ofificer. Yet one 
doubts whether Cook would have received the appointment had either Wallis or Carteret 

returned in time. Their 
experience of the Pacific 
would have outweighed 
Cook's proved zeal, intelli- 
gence, and scientific attain- 
ments. However, Cook 
was recommended by Mr. 
Stephens, Secretary to the 
Admiralty, and no other 
ofificer seems to have been 
considered at all. Certainly 
the command of an expe- 
dition, not warlike, from which no glory of the usual kind could be obtained, certain to be 
long and tedious, and equally certain to be full of dangers and discomforts, was not a post 
for which back-stairs influence would be employed, or favouritism brought into request." 

In the language of this biographer, " Cook accepted the ofTer eagerly and instantly. 
It was indeed an enormous step upwards ; he was taken out of the master's line, from 
which there was seldom any promotion possible, and placed into the higher branch ; he 
received the rank of lieutenant." With Sir Huijh Palliser he at once set to work to 
examine the vessels then for sale in the Thames, and selected as the most suitable for 
the contemplated mission, a small barque of three hundred and seventy tons burden, 
which had been built originally for the coal trade in Cook's old sailing-port of Whitby. 
She was therefore constructed with a view to strength rather than to speed, and calculated 
to withstand the stress of the severest weather. She was carefully fitted out, armed 
with ten carriage and twelve swivel guns, provisioned for eighteen months, and commis- 
sioned for His Majesty's Navy under the name of the Endeavour, commanded by 
Lieutenant James Cook. 

While the ship lay at anchor in the Thames, the little party of scientific adventurers 
was making its last preparations for what must have been regarded by most of them as 
a somewhat hazardous enterprise. The President of the Royal Society, afterwards known 
to the history of colonization as Sir Joseph Banks, "a man of large private means, and 
already of considerable scientific reputation," decided to join the expedition. Astronomer 
Charles Green, who had for years occupied the responsible ofifice of first assistant to the 
Astronomer-Royal, was selected to superintend that portion of the proposed observations, 
and Dr. Solander, a Swedish botanist and one of the assistants of the British Museum, 
volunteered to accompany the expedition, and aid Banks in making collections of plants 



CAPTAFN COOK. 



29 



and animals. Banks took also with him a draughtsman named Sydney Parkinson (who 
wrote a journal of the voyage), a naturalist, and others as assistants. 

Before the Endeavour was fitted out Captain Wallis returned with news of the 
discovery of Otaheite, the Tahiti of modern spelling, which he had named "King 
George the Third's Island," and which is probably identical with La Sagittai'ia of Ue 
Quires ; and as this place seemed more convenient for the purposes of astronomical 
observation than any of the islands of the Marquesas Group, it was determined that 
the scientific preparations for that object should be made there, and the path of the 
planet across the sun's disc followed from some convenient spot within the island. 

On the 26th of August, 1 768, which happened to fall on a Friday, the Endeavour 
set sail from Plymouth Sound, having on board a complement of eighty-five men, 
" including the captain, two lieutenants, three midshipmen, a master, surgeon, boatswain, 
carpenter, and the other petty officers, with forty-one able seamen, twelve marines, and 
nine servants," and thus the first of the celebrated voyages of England's most famous 
navigator was begun. 

A voyage of six months carried the Endeavour round Cape Horn, and a pleasant 
run of four months across the Pacific saw her anchored at Otaheite, where a small fort 
and an observatory 
were built. Nearly two 
months passed i n 

friendly intercourse ^_^,»_^»_ — ^___„^^^_^^_^^ 

with the natives, and ^' ' -■■ - ■■ ^ -'-•^^^^^^^^^^^^■■(■^^^■ik. . -.» . 

the eventful day of 

the transit dawned 

with a cloudless sky. 

The observations were 

successful beyond all 

anticipation, and by 

combining the results with those of other observers conclusions were arrived at which, 

though afterwards slightly modified, have been of more than ordinar)- importance, both 

in themselves and in the suggestions to which they have given rise, not only to the study 

of astronomy, but to the business of practical navigation. 

On leaving Otaheite the Endeavour started on her homeward voyage. Cook intend- 
ing to round the Cape of Good Hope and thus make his voyage one of circumnaviga- 
tion. But his commission instructed him to solve, if possible, on his return passage, the 
still unravelled mystery- of the .Southern Ocean, and ascertain "whether the unexplored 
part of the .Southern Hemisphere be only an immense mass of water or contain another 
continent," as he says in the introduction to the account of his second voyage. So he 
sailed for three months on a traverse through the Pacific and at last sighted a coast 
which, on nearer approach, presented a bold and picturesque aspect. He at first thought 
this to be the eastern coast of the great unknown territory he was in search of, but 
further reflection convinced him that it was only the land, now knowm as New Zealand, 
which had been seen a hundred and twenty years before by Tasman. Cook 
steered to the southward until he sighted Cape Turn-again, when, in order scrupulously 




BARE ISLAM;, i^ulAN, i;a\. 



,o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

to obsen'e his instructions, he doubled on his course, and sailing close to the shore 
examined and named in succession Hawke, Poverty and Mercur>' Bays. Then carefully 
threadinij his way through the wild volcanic islands of the Hauraki Gulf, he rounded 
Cape Maria van Diemen, and directing his course again to the south, entered for the 
first time that well-known passage since called Cook's Strait ; he then coasted the other 
large island of New Zealand, and observed both so closely as to be able to make a fairly 
correct chart of all the shores. 

Repeated efforts were made to land and cultivate friendly relations with the natives, 
but the Maoris were found to be both suspicious and combative, their conduct leading 
frequently to collisions, often accompanied with bloodshed. Having completed his examina- 
tion of the shores of New Zealand in such a manner as to leave little work for future 
discoverers, Cook left Cape Farewell on the 31st of March, 1770, and held on his 
course to the west. 

So far as the cruise of the Endeavour had now gone, as the narrative of this first 
voyage points out, the vessel's track had demonstrated that the various points of land 
seen or touched at b\- the earlier navigators were not portions of the Great Antarctic 
Continent. This was one important negative result of the expedition. The direction in 
which Cook was now steering was leading him to the solution of a more positive 
question in the discovery of the east coast of New Holland — the name given by the 
Dutch to the Terra Australis Incognita of all the old geographers. On the 19th of 
April, and after a run of nearly three weeks from New Zealand, land was sighted, and 
called Point Hicks after the first lieutenant of the E?ideavoiir, but Cook must have been 
deceived in some way by the sand-hills of the Ninety-mile Beach, for on that part of 
the Victorian Coast there is no such point to be found. Then, steering to the north- 
ward, he rounded and named the bare and sandy Cape Howe, now so well known as a 
boundary mark between the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales. 

To the eyes of these weather-beaten navigators the shore-line must have appeared 
ver)' beautiful with its picturesque line of cliffs, broken here and there by small harbours 
and beaches of dazzling sand; forming, too, so agreeable a contrast to the fringe of 
arid desert which their own experience, and the reports of Dampier, had led them to 
expect. Behind the curiing breakers and the rocky escarpment of the coast rose ranges of 
hills and mountains which, against the clear Australian sky of that Easter season, must 
have loomed singularly soft and lovely, seamed as they were with deep gorges and 
gullies densely tree-fledged, and purpled with the atmospheric damson -bloom that distance 
lends to forest-mantled hills. Mount Dromedary, the Pigeon House, Point Upright, Cape 
St. George and Red Point still bear evidence in the names then given them of the 
minute attention this coast attracted and received. 

On the 28th of April, the Endeavour, after King becalmed for some hours about a 
mile and a half off the shore, sailed between the sheltering points of a narrow opening 
into the waters of a large bay. Here Cook landed for the first time on Australian 
soil. The mariners hoped to make friends of the natives, but from the first it was 
evident they would receive opposition, for as the pinnace was rowed along by the beach 
m search of a suitable anchorage, a string of savages, bearing their light spears and 
their boomerangs in readiness to strike, paced the sands abreast of her. They were all 



CAPTAIN COOK. ,, 

quite naked, and their bodies were fancifully marked with white streaks. The Endeavour 
cast anchor at a spot right opposite a group of eight mia-mias, under the shade of 
which was an old woman with three children, in all their dusky nudity, apparently 




engaged in cooking, for 
they paid little or no 
attention to the strange 
sight of the white man's 
ship, nor to the harsh 
sound made by the paj- 
ing out of her cable through the hawse-hole. 
In the course of the afternoon Cook 
prepared to make a landing, but as his 
boats neared the shore two natives ran down 
to the rocks with spears in their hands, and 

" in a very loud tone, and in a harsh dissonant language" — which a New Zealander, whom 
Cook had taken with him. was unable to understand — they appeared to be forbidding the 
visitors to advance. A present of some nails and beads seemed for a moment to produce 
a good effect, but on the attempt to land being renewed, the natives again showed signs 
of opposition. Cook endeavoured to make them understand that he wanted water, ami 
that no injury was designed, but his attempts at conciliation met with no success. A 



DING 



32 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

musket was then fired between them, upon which the younger of the natives, who 
appeared to be about nineteen or twenty years of age, "brought a bundle of lances on 
the rock, but recollecting himself in an instant snatched them up again in great haste.' 
One of them threw a stone at the boat ; this was replied to by a discharge of small 
shot, which struck him on the legs, and he and his companion took to flight. Cook 
landed, thinking the unequal contest at an end ; but he had scarcely quitted the boat 
when the aboriginals returned, armed with heclamans, or shields, for their defence. They 
approached towards the white men and threw their spears, but with no result. A musket 
was again fired at them, to which they replied with another spear, and then they vanished 
from sight among the high grass and bushes in the vicinity, giving the navigators a 
favourable impression of their courage and intrepidity. 

Cook and his party walked up to the deserted camp, and with much curiosity examined 
the household economy of its simple inhabitants. Then, leaving some beads, ribbons and 
pieces of cloth in exchange for two or three spears, which they appropriated, the white 
men returned to their boat, observing on their way some light canoes, each made of a 
single sheet of bark, bent and tied up at both ends. 

In his pinnace Cook sailed round this bay, which he found generally shallow. l>ut 
the shores proved verj' interesting and yielded to the botanists such a collection of 
plants totally new to science, that the place received the name of Botany Bay in com- 
memoration of the circumstance. In the evening two boats' crews were sent away fishing, 
and they caught, in four hauls of the seine, some three or four hundred-weight of 
excellent fish. Many efforts were made to conciliate the natives, who would, however, 
hold no communication with any of the strangers, except by trying to make them under- 
stand, though without attacking them, that their presence on shore was offensive. One 
of the first duties the visitors had to discharge was the burial of a comrade, a 
seaman named Forby Sutherland, who was thus, as far as we have any historical 
evidence, the first white man buried on the eastern coast of Australia. 

A day or two after their first landing Cook. Banks and Solander made a short 
trip inland, and were delighted at the sight of flocks of parrots and paroquets, but 
more especially was their attention engaged by the beautifully-crested cockatoos, then 
quite unknown in Europe. As they penetrated these silent forests their eyes were feasted 
with sights wholly novel, and the exultation of the naturalists at the prospect of the 
additions they were about to make to the sum of ascertained scientific knowledge may 
well be imagined. Cook, who was concerned rather with the practical aspect of the 
countr)', noted with pleasure some charming meadow-lands and patches of excellent black 
soil, as well as places where good freestone could be had for house-building. Had chance 
but led their steps a little to the north they would have seen the unrivalled harbour 
on which Sydney now stands, but by them it was destined to remain undiscovered, 
even though in subsequent rambles they must have been within two or three hundred 
yards of eminences from which its long bright reaches would have been distinctly visible. 
During his sojourn at Botany Bay, Cook caused the English colours to be hoisted daily, 
having taken possession of the territory in the name of His Majesty, King George HI., 
an occasion commemorated in the picture painted by T. A. Gilfillan, and presented by him 
to the Philosophical Institute of Victoria. It can readily be imagined, though Cook's 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



33 



narrative says nothing about it, that such a circumstance as this was not allowed to 
pass without the usual festivities, and it is not difficult to hear in fancy the rattle 
of the royal salute from the muskets of the marines; thus awakening, and probably 
for the first time, the echoes of a silent Continent. 

At day-break on the 6th of May, 1770, the Endeavour sailed out of Botany Bay, 
and while passing northward along the coast, sighted a small opening which appeared 




to be the entrance to a 
large harbour. To this 
Cook gave the name of 
Port Jackson, in honour 
of his friend Sir George 
Jackson, the Secretary 
to the Admiralty ; but 
he kept on his course, 
and thus again missed 
the opportunity of add- 
ing to his fame by a 
report of the discovery 
of one of the finest and 
most commodious har- 
bours in the world. Soon 
afterwards another break 
in the rocks was noted, 
and this Cook judged to 
be the entrance to a 
small inlet, which he 
called Broken Bay. Pur- 
suing his course northward, and not having time to examine the various indentations along 
the coast, and merely setting down the general trend of the land, he sailed past high shores 
of rolling hills, verdant to the very top with dark-foliaged trees, and sighted Smoky Cape 
— so named from the smoke of the natives' fires upon it ; the next prominent head- 
land, Cape Byron, was called after the distinguished circumnavigator, who was at that time 
an admiral, and Governor of Newfoundland ; at Point Danger the Endeavour experienced 
a somewhat narrow escape from disaster ; and so the process of discovery and naming 
after an old-world place or friend, a high authority, some incident of the voyage or 
natural feature that came under the navigator's notice, went on daily. 

Without knowing it to be insular, Cook passed the long stretch of miserable sand- 



AUSTKALIAN BIRDS AND KISIl. 



34 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

hills now called Moreton Island, and rounding a low spit, which he named Cape 
Moreton, he descried a broad and shallow inlet, which was set down on the chart as 
Moreton Bay. A somewhat similar opening was discovered further north, and called 
Hervey's Bay. though it was in reality a strait ; and soon after he crossed the tropic 
of Capricorn, and reached the latitude of the Great Barrier Reef, a natural outwork of 
coral, which fringes the coast of Queensland for nearly a thousand miles. The shores 
now seemed low and swampy, and fringed with mangroves, but inland there rose 
picturesque hills, on which the cabbage-tree palm could frequently be discerned. 

At Keppel Bay, Cook, Banks and Solander again landed, and had a long and 
fatiguing, but highly interesting excursion inland. Large hills built by white ants, myriad 
flights of gay butterflies, singular fish that had the power to leap from stone to stone 
on the dry land, hitherto unknown plants and some ver)- beautiful birds were observed, 
but they could see nothing of the natives, nor could they find any fresh water. On 
setting sail again, and still steering to the northward, the Endeavour skirted a shore 
consisting of pleasant meadow -like land, backed by timbered hills, while to the seaward 
could be seen the foam-flecked lines of the Barrier Reef, over which the sea broke and 
made smooth water between it and the shore; but dangerous indeed to navigation on 
account of the constant succession of rocks rising near to the surface, and in some 
places above it. Cook had so far navigated his vessel in perfect safety along thirteen 
hundred miles of a totally unknown coast, probably never before sighted by Europeans ; 
but here, off a rocky point which he called from the circumstance Cape Tribulation, he 
met with what was fortunately his first, although not his most serious disaster. 

It was ten o'clock on a fine moonlight night, all seemed well, the vessel was in 
water twenty fathoms deep, and Cook had retired to rest, when, without a moment's 
warning, a crash resounded throughout the ship, a shudder was felt pulsating through her 
timbers, she heeled over, quivered like a living thing from stem to stern — then log-like 
she lay, immovable, hard jammed upon a reef. .A.t once all was bustle, all hands were 
hastily summoned to quarters, sails were shortened, boats launched, kedges dropped, 
capstans manned, and every effort made to ease the vessel off — but in vain. As the 
wind freshened, the ship began to rise slowly on the crest of the waves, and to bump 
heavily in the trough — the copper-sheathing was stripping, and large pieces of false keel 
came swirling to the surface. As the tide receded she settled down in a hollow between 
two jutting points of coral. The only chance of release was by lightening the ship, and 
preparing her for floating off when the tide should again rise. To this and six guns, 
a quantity of chain cable, decayed stores, casks, and so forth, were thrown overboard. 
The pumps were kept at work all night, discipline prevailed, for all were impressed with 
the imminence of their fate, but day dawned with painful slowness, only to show 
them the nearest point of land nearly four and twenty miles away. 

At noon the sea fell to almost a perfect calm, but the tide did not rise high 
enough to float the ship. It was therefore necessary to wait until midnight, keeping the 
pumps hard at work the whole time. \t nine o'clock in the evening the vessel suddenly 
righted with a lurch that sent everybody staggering ; but so great was the body of water 
which had gained on the pumps that Cook feared she would inevitably founder as soon 
as she lifted off the rocks. The critical moment came at twenty minutes past ten, 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



35 



when she slowly moved out of her place, and was still buoyant enough to ride on the 
rising swell. The men were so spent with toil at the pumps that they could work in 
relays of only five minutes at a time, throwing themselves in utter exhaustion on the 
deck when their strength was spent. Sail was hoisted, and all speed made for the shore ; 
but before a place could be discovered on which to beach the ship the leak was found to 
be gaining on the pumps at a dangerous rate. However, by passing an old sail under 




CAl'TAIN COOKS LANDING-PLACE, BOTANY BAY. 



the keel, and keeping it tight with ropes, the influx of water was at length so far 
reduced as not to gain on the pumps. Two days later the vessel entered an estuary 
which Cook called the hlndcavotir River, where she was successfully beached. 

A tent was soon pitched to serve as a hospital for the scurvy-smitten seamen ; a 
blacksmith's forge and shops for the carpenters were erected, and the necessary repairs 
to the vessel were begun. On examination it was found that the hole made would have 
been far more than sufficient to sink her, but that a large piece of coral, which to a 
great extent stopped the leak, had been embedded in the gap. The damage was soon 
repaired, but while the sick were recovering there was time for explorations into the 
countr}', and Banks, having with him two greyhounds, added to the pleasures of botanical 
collection that of a kangaroo-hunt, which he was thus, perhaps, the first European to 
enjoy. One kangaroo was shot, and the meat was highly appreciated by the not too 
dainty sailors, who for months past had subsisted upon salt junk. 

After an interval of seven weeks, and all repairs having been effected, the Endeavour 

was floated ; and Cook being determined to make the open sea on the other side of 

the Barrier Reef, directed his course towards an opening where no breakers were visible. 

The passage was made in safety, and then, steering to the northward, the promontory 



36 



A US TRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



of Cape York was rounded and named. At this point Cool< altered his course to the 
westward, and sailing through the great water-way which bears the name of the Spaniard 
Torres, he bore away for Batavia. Cook did not know that he was simply following in 
the wake of the old Almirante of Ue Quiros, and under the impression that he was the 
original discoverer, he gave to the sea-road which separates Australia from New Guinea 
the name of Endeavour Straits. 

It will be remembered that up to this tiine, and for some years afterwards, the 
report of Torres lay among the archives at Manila, neglected and forgotten, so that 
the existence of a passage from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean had not yet been made 
known. An eager desire to set the question at rest now took possession of Cook's 
mind. In threading the channel he found that it grew gradually wider, and two distant 
points were descried between which no land was visible. Cook landed on one of the 
islands, and after scaling an eminence, which commanded an uninterrupted view to 
the south-west and west-south-west for a distance of forty miles, the suspicion that he 
had found a practicable passage between New Guinea and the main-land gave place to 
what was almost an absolute certainty. Here, for the time being. Cook brought his 
Australian exploration to a close ; but before he passed through the straits that Torres 
had discovered more than a century and a half before, he hoisted the Union Jack on 
Possession Island — as he named the spot where he landed on this occasion. It was his 
fifth landing-place since the date of his first approach to the Australian Coast, and here 
he went through a ceremony which is best described in his own words. 

" As I am now about to quit the eastern coast of New Holland," wrote the 
fortunate circumnavigator, " which I have coasted from latitude thirty-eight degrees to 
this place, and which I am confident no European has ever seen before, I once more 
hoist English colours ; and though I have already taken possession of several parts, I 
now take possession of the whole of the eastern coast, b)' the name of New South 
Wales (from" Its great similarity to that part of the principality of Wales), in right of 
my Sovereign, George the Third, King of Great Britain." The marines who surrounded 
him then fired three volleys of small arms, which were responded to by the same 
number from the ship. Sail was promptly made, and soon the Australian coast sank 
beneath the horizon, as the Endeavour passed on her way through Torres Straits to 
Batavia, where she was again beached and repaired. 

By this time the confinement of so long a voyage had caused the utmost prostra- 
tion to the crew, who were so much affected by the fever-laden atmosphere of Batavia, 
that all but ten were stricken down, and seven deaths occurred ; on resuming their 
homeward journey the men began to succumb to scurvy, so that by the time the vessel 
reached England, she was little better than a floating hospital. Besant, Cook's latest 
biographer, in a graphic passage writes : — " After leaving Batavia, where the whole com- 
pany seem to have been poisoned by the heat and the stinks of the place, scurvy and 
fever together fell upon the crew, so that forty were on the sick list. Out of the forty 
twenty-three died. This dreadful calamity— the sight of all the suffering— impressed Cook 
so much that in future we shall find him taking as much thought for the prevention of 
scurvy, as for the prosecution of the enterprise in hand ; and after the second voyage 
he was as much congratulated on his success in this respect as on his achievements as 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



n 




o 



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y. 



o 

X 



as & 



5 S 



O 
t/: 

o 



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o 
o 

C£. 

O 
O 



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u 



38 



.-^ ( 'STRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



an explorer of unknown seas. The death Hst, indeed, was frightful. The astronomer, 
Charles Green, died ; the surgeon, Monkhouse, died ; the first lieutenant, Hicks, died ; 
among others who died were Sporing and Parkinson, both of Banks's party ; two mid- 
shipmen ; the master—' a young man of good parts, but unhappily given up to intem- 
perance, which brought on disorders that put an end to his life ' ; the boatswain : the 
carpenter, his mate, and two of his crew ; the sail-maker — a good old man of sevent)-, 
who had kept himself from fever in Batavia by getting drunk every day — and his mate ; 
the corporal of marines ; the cook, and in all about a dozen seamen. This was a 
goodly roll out of a company of eighty. But this was the last voyage in which scurvy 
was to demand such an enormous proportion of victims. Cook was going to prove the 
best physician ever known in the prevention of scurvy. The onl\- true method of pre- 
vention, however, the mode of preserving every variety of fresh food, was not discovered 
for a long time afterwards. Mr. Clark Russell has remarked in his 'Life of Dampier ' 
that in those days they over-salted the beef and pork. The remark is equally true of 
the provisions served out in Cook's time. They were over-salted. George Forster, of the 
second voyage, complains bitterly of the time when the private stores of the officers and 
passengers were exhausted, and they had to live on the ship's provisions just like the 
crew. He tells us how, everv-dav, the sight and smell of the salt junk that was served 
to them made them loathe their food, which, besides, was so hard that there was neither 
nourishment nor flavour left in it. Imagine the misery, the solid misery, of having to live 
upon nothing but a fibrous mass of highly-salted animal matter, accompanied by rotten 
and weevily biscuit ! Think of this going on da)' after day for a hundred days, and 
sometimes more, at a stretch — three long months — with no bread, vegetables, butter, or 
fruit ; even the water gone bad, and no tea, cofifee, or cocoa." 

From such a commissariat, and the sickness and death which it induced, the crew 
of the Endeavour obtained a respite at the Cape, where a long stay with fresh food and 
much care re-invigorated them sufficiently to set sail in April, and continue their home- 
ward voyage. After a call at .St. Helena, the vessel anchored in the Downs on the 
1 2th of June, 1771, after an absence of nearly three years. 

Cook brought back to England the shattered remnant of a crew, and a vessel with 
sails and ropes so rotten that they dropped to pieces at the slightest strain, and the 
Endeavours safe return to port was a subject as much for astonishment as gratitude. 
But the astronomical, geographical, botanical and ethnographical results of this voyage 
were so great, and awakened so much enthusiasm, that the King desired another expedi- 
tion to set forth without delay. The great navigator was promoted to the rank of 
Commander, and the publication, by Dr. Hawkesworth, of an account of his adventures 
excited the greatest interest and attention in the national mind. The Earl of Sandwich, 
who was at that time at the head of the Admiralty, selected two vessels, the Rcso/u- 
tion and the Adventure ; Cook was placed in command of the expedition as Captain of 
the former, with Tobias Furneaux, w^ho had been Wallis's first lieutenant, as his 
a.ssociate, and the preparations for departure were pushed busily forward. 

Curiously enough, during the Endeavours absence on her celebrated first voyage, 
Dalrymple, whose command of the expedition had, through some misunderstanding with 
the Admiralty, reverted to Cook, published his famous " Historical Collection of 



CAPTAIN LOOK. 



39 



Voyages," with a dedication which reads as follows : — " Not to him who discovered 
scarcely anything but Patagonians ; not to him who, from twenty degrees South Latitude, 
thinking it impossible to go on discovery iiito thirty degrees South, determined to come 
home round the world into fifty degrees North ; nor to him who, infatuated with female 
blandishments, forgot for what he went abroad, and hasten'd back to amuse the Euro- 
pean world with stories of Enchantments in the New Cytherea ; but to the man who, 




J.R.R^H' 



CAl'TAlX CUOR SIGHTING TIIK (iLASS-HOUSE Mi),.\ 



1. .'..-. I l.l-.\ 



emulous of Magalhanes and the heroes of former times, undeterr'd by Difficulties, and 
unseduc'd by Pleasure, shall persist through every Obstacle, and not by Chance but by 
Virtue and Good Conduct succeed in establishing an intercourse with a Southern Conti- 
nent, this historical collection of former discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean is 
presented by Alexander Dalrymple." 

Cook seemed pointed to by a kindly fate as the man who, by virtue of inherent 
right, was to appropriate this dedication of Dalrymple's, and he himself writes of his 
second voyage that it was undertaken " to complete the discovery of the Southern 
Hemisphere." But he did not find it. The Great Antarctic Continent, which had filled 
men's minds for centuries, the thought of which had spurred them on to much heroic 
effort, did not exist ; and to Cook belongs the credit of dissipating the fascinating dream. 

On the 13th of July, 1772, the two vessels sailed from Plymouth Sound, and after 
a voyage of one hundred and nine days made Table Bay, where Sparrman, a pupil of 
the great Linne, joined the expedition. After a stay of about three weeks, the Resolu- 
tion and the Advetiture left the Cape in the month of November on the dreary quest 
of an Antarctic Continent. Heading direct south. Cook crossed the Circle amid wild and 
stormy weather, neither sun nor moon being visible for nearly two months. In the 
rolling fogs, and thick and sombre atmosphere .of these inhospitable regions, the two 
ships wandered up and down, threading their way with incessant watchfulness amid an 



40 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

endless succession of rocking icebergs and crunching floes, but no sign of land was 
seen. In the gloom and storm they lost each other, but met again at their rendezvous 
in Queen Charlotte Sound, where Cook upon arrixal found the Adventure already at 
anchor. Furneau.x reported that Van Diemen's Land was joined to New South Wales, 
with a wide bay between, and this stopped further enquiry in that direction, and they 
aimin pierced the southern fogs, and crossed once more that chilly Antarctic Circle, 
enduring many hardships from the severity of the climate, but no discovery of land of 
any e.xtent rewarded their efforts, and in a heavy gale which they encountered the 
sliips once more parted company. Cook again visited the Sound, where he waited for 
three weeks, when, as the Adventure did not arrive, he sailed northward to the beautiful 
islands he had previously seen — to Otaheite, the New Hebrides, the Marquesas and 
other groups. These had been already discovered, and man)- of them named, by. the 
illustrious Frenchman, De Bougainville, only a year or two before ; but Cook was the 
first to map them out completely, and to ascertain their exact positions. It was during 
the course of this passage that he discovered and mapped out New Caledonia, and then 
turning south in order to pass the hottest month or two of the year, he found on his 
way that beautiful oasis of the ocean, wonderfully fertile, but lacking a single inhabitant, 
to which he gave the name of Norfolk Island. 

After calling at New Zealand, Cook sailed for Cape Horn, where he employed 
some time in making: a verv careful chart of the coasts. Still an.xious to discover the 
Antarctic Continent in search of which he had been sent, he turned south again into 
the region of perpetual ice — and this time found land. It was a high coast covered 
with thick ice, which ever and anon .slipped slowly down from the steep barren hills, 
and breaking off at the cliff-verges plunged over with sudden splashes that echoed, from 
minute to minute, far up the fiords and around the silent peaks that towered like 
spires of frosted silver in the icy air. The Continent was at last, perhaps, discovered ; 
but it was useless for settlement, and full of dangers. Cook soon abandoned it, and 
sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. He reached England in July, 1775, after an 
ab.sence of about three years, having circumnavigated the world, and thus completed a 
voyage which, with all its windings, was not less than sixty thousand miles. The crew 
of this expedition numbered one hundred and eighteen men ; yet of that number all 
returned save four, a remarkable testimony to the care and assiduity of their Com- 
mander who then, for the first time, found means of preventing the ravages of the 
scurvy which had so long been the dread of mariners on long voyages. 

It will be recollected that the Adventure, Captain Furneaux's ship, had been 
separated from her consort in the fog and storm of an Antarctic traverse, and subse- 
quently meeting with tempestuous weather she failed to put in an appearance at Queen 
Charlotte's Sound, the place of rendezvous appointed by Cook, until after the Resolution 
had left. During her stay on this part of the New Zealand Coast some trouble of a 
tragic character occurred with the natives. One day a boat's crew which had landed 
from the Adventure were surprised, butchered, and eaten ; immediately after which Fur- 
neaux set sail for England, and arrived there some months before the Resolutioti. 

Cook's reception by his fellow-countrymen was for the second time of a most 
enthusiastic character. Not long after his return he was raised to the rank of Post- 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



41 



Captain. He was also appointed a Captain in Greenwich Hospital, and this position 
provided him for Hfe with a residence, if he chose to Hve there. He was unanimously 
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he received its gold medal for 1776 for 
the best experimental research of the year. This honour was bestowed upon the great 
circumnavigator for his paper on " The Preservation of Seamen Engaged on Long 
Voyages from Scurvy." 
He was every-where re- 
ceived with the highest 
marks of distinction, and 
had he so chosen might 
have enjoyed the re- 
mainder of his life in 
peace and security in the 
bosom of his family. 

But little more than 
a year of rest had passed 
before he was again at 





ESTUARY NEAR WHICH THp; " ENDEAVOUR STRUCK. 



THE "EMiEAVoLK ON A REEF. 

sea, this time on his third and last 
voyage. The discovery of a North- 
West Passage to the East Indies 
had long been a dream of English 
enterprise, and the Earl of Sand- 
wich, who was still First Lord of 
the Admiralty, was specially desirous of achieving something in that direction. 
While disclaiming any intention of interfering with Captain Cook's well-earned leisure, 
it was felt that he was the person best qualified to give advice and counsel on 
such a subject. Lord Sandwich therefore invited Cook, Sir Hugh Palliser, and Mr. 
Secretary Stephens — who first recommended the navigator to the notice of the Board 
of Admiralty — to dine with him together one day, and in the course of an after-dinner 
conversation, so wrought on the imagination of Cook, and so fired his ambition, that he 
leapt to his feet and at once volunteered to take command of an expedition to be sent 
out in search of a North-West Passage to the East Indies. The proposal was at once 
laid before the King, a bounty of twenty thousand pounds was promised for division 
amongst the crew on the successful return of the ships, and in June, 1776, the expedi- 



42 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

tion was read)- for sea. Cook was re-appointed to his old ship, the Resolution, with the 
Discoz'en: a vessel of three hundred tons, commanded by Captain Clerke, to act under 
his orders. For a considerable time Cook concealed from his wife the fact that he again 
intended to tempt fate and fortune upon the high seas, and his widow was to the end of 
her life wont to grieve that his acceptance of the command of the expedition had been 
withheld from her. Cook had in all probability good reason for his conduct, seeing that 
his youngest child, Hugh, was born just after his father's ship had sailed from Plymouth 
for the South Pacific Main. On the iith of July, the Resolution 2iX\d xha Discovery vKtxgheA 
anchor and stood out for sea, with that England abaft the beam which the eyes of the 
greatest of her sailors should never greet again. 

Instead of trying the passage by the Atlantic route. Cook suggested that the expe- 
dition should proceed south to the Pacific, and thence attempt the enterprise by reaching 
the high latitudes between Asia and America. It was the continual failure of every 
expedition that essayed the accomplishment of a North-West Passage that occasioned this 
change of plans. Hitherto mariners had sought to force their ships through the frozen 
waters of the North Atlantic, and it was this alteration from the usually-pursued course 
which lent the expedition an assurance of success. From the Pacific, therefore, the North- 
West Passage was to be discovered. 

By the close of the jear, the Resolution and the Discovery had rounded the Cape, 
passed Prince Edward Island, so named by Cook, and the Marion and Crozet Groups, 
and touched at the indescribably desolate shores of Kerguelen Land, which, in 1772, had 
been discovered by the French navigator whose name it bears. Thence they sailed to 
Van Diemen's Land, anchoring a few days in Adventure Bay, where they landed and 
found the natives very friendly. Cook did not in any way map out the coasts, and resumed 
his voyage under the continued impression that Van Diemen's Land was only the southern 
point of New Holland. On the loth of February, 1777, New Zealand hove in sight, and the 
day following the expedition made Queen Charlotte's Sound, where the sailors "refreshed" 
for about a fortnight. On the 25th of February Cook resumed his voyage, and steering- 
northwards discovered a group of islands, which he named after tlie Earl of Sandwich, 
but he did not remain long in the waters of this beautiful archipelago. He was, how- 
ever, so bafiled by contrary winds and bad weather that, on reaching the coast of North 
America and entering Behring Sea, he found the ice already forming and an early 
winter setting in, which precluded the immediate prospect of accomplishing the object of 
the expedition, he therefore, decided to turn back and employ his time in making a 
more careful examination of the Sandwich Islands. On his return he discovered the 
largest and one of the most beautiful of the group, called by .the natives Hawaii, but 
written in Cook's spelling of the word Owhyee. 

The -South Sea Islanders were notorious thieves, and the natives of Hawaii being 
no exception to the rule, the navigators were much troubled by the peculations of 
the visitors' to their .ships. One night the cutter was stolen, and in the morning Captain 
Cook went ashore to see the king about it, and as neither information nor .satisfaction 
was to be had, he resolved to seize so important a personage, and to take him on 
board one of the ships, with a view of keeping him prisoner until the missing cutter 
was restored. A vast crowd of natives, however, surprised and alarmed at seeing their 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



43 



head man being led down to the shore by a party of marines, 
gathered around the Englishmen with an evident intention of 
opposing the monarch's forcible abduction. Just then news 
was brought from another part of the island that the white 
strangers had fired on some Hawaiians and killed a chief. 
This produced great excitement, and 
seeing that the detention of the king 
could only end in bloodshed, Cook 
liberated his prisoner and hailed his boats. 
As the embarkation proceeded, the 
natives began their attack with showers 
of stones, but without doing any damage. 
Cook let his men go on board one of 





f 



BURIAL OF CAl'TIAX COOKS REMAINS AT SEA, AND HIS MONUMENT AT HAWAII. 



the boats, and that being filled he himself waited for the other, which was only a few 
yards distant. He was thus left alone for a moment, and a native taking advantage of 



44 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




'■^^ 



ANTOIXE UK BOUGAIWII.I.E. 



it, Stepped up from behind and struck him on the back of the head. He fell in 

shallow water, and there was at once a rush of savages over his fallen bod). They 

stabbed him in many places, and as the second boat approached in the attempt to 

effect a rescue, a marine and three sailors were killed, and a lieutenant, a sergeant and 

two other men were wounded, the boats being 
compelled to pull off without recovering the 
body, which was taken inland and treated by 
the Hawaiian islanders with great barbarity. 

Thus perished at the post of duty the most 
successful leader in the work of Australian 
exploration, after laying open a new Continent 
to the world, and solving the mystery of the 
Southern Ocean that had perplexed geographers 
so long. One who accompanied Captain Cook 
on his last expedition, writes : — " I need make 
no reflection on the loss we suffered on this 
occasion, or attempt to describe what we felt. 
It is enough to .say that no man was ever 
more beloved or admired ; and it is trul)' painful 
to reflect that he seems to have fallen a sacri- 
fice merely for want of being properly sup- 
ported ; a fate singularly to be lamented as 
having fallen to his lot who had ever been 

conspicuous for his care of tho.se under his command, and who seemed to the 

last to pay as much attention to their preservation as to that of his own life." 

Several of Cook's biographers have, however, altogether misunderstood the causes that 

led up to his death at the hands of the Hawaiians — causes 

that were intimately connected with certain legends of 

their mythology, which associated an absconding god, Lono, 

with the great navigator who was so unfortunate as to 

outlive their 'belief in his divinity. The explanation of the 

tragedy has been given at length by Manley Hopkins, 

Hawaiian Consul-General, in his " History of Hawaii," and 

he obtained it direct from the islanders themselve.s. 

There is considerable doubt as to the fate of Cook's 

remains, some contending that they were carried away by 

the natives and deposited in their sacred places ; however, 

a pas.sage in Kippis's edition of " Cook's Voyages," published ■ 

in 1 788, says that " though every exertion was made for 

that purpose, though negotiation and threatenings were 

alternately employed, little more than the principal part of 

his bones, and that with great difficulty, were recovered. By the possession of them 

our navigators were enabled to perform the last offices to their eminent and unfortunate 

commander." The bones were placed in a coffin, and when the vessels were at sea the 





FIGURE-HEAD OF THE 
" RE.SOLUTION." 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



45 



funeral service was 
read over them, and 
with military honours 
they were committed 
to the deep. " What," 
writes Kippis, " were 
the feelings of the 
companies of both the 
ships on this occasion 
must be left to the 
world to conceive, for 
those who were pre- 
sent know, that it is 
not in the power of 
any pen to express 
them." 

After Cook's death 
the command of the 
expedition devolved on 
Captain Clerke, of the 
Discovery, and both 
ships once more pro- 
ceeded on their voy- 
age. On the 2nd of 
August Clerke died of 
iths after the death of his 
id in Kamschatka, and was 
succeeded in the command of his own ship by 
Lieutenant King ; Gore, first lieutenant of the Resolution, taking charge of the expedition. 
The vessels arrived safely in England in October, 1780, after an absence of over four 
years. They had not succeeded in the attempt to discover a passage to the north of 
America, although many other islands besides the .Sandwich Group had been discovered 
and charted, and many valuable additions had been made to geographical knowledge. 
The melancholy fate of Cook is, however, the one especial incident by which the expe- 
dition will ever be remembered. 

The news of the death of the great explorer was received in his native country 
with some emotion, and in more than one continental centre with regret. Gold and 
silver medals were struck by the Royal Society to commemorate its late member, 
yearly pensions of two hundred pounds to his widow and twenty-five pounds to each of 
his three sons were awarded by the Government, and a coat of arms was granted to his 
family. But the noblest memorial of the distinguished services of Captain Cook, outside 
of the record of his work itself, is to be found in the magnificent statue and monument 
of the great circumnavigator erected by the people of New South Wales. It stands on 
a picturesque site in Hyde Park, Sydney — a noble memorial of one of England's greatest 




was 



46 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

naval heroes. The Government of that colony has also purchased and deposited in the 
Sydney Museum the only obtainable relics of his celebrated voyages— the compass, tele- 
scope and water-bottles, which are said to have been used by him on board his ships 
during his famous expeditions. 

Cook is reaily the last of the great discoverers. He brings to a splendid close 
that story of the Sea which had its opening chapters in the first faint dawn of civiliza- 
tion in the Old World. His death marks a new period in maritime history. Henceforth 
the work of navigation becomes limited and circumscribed, confined mainly to marine 
surveying and the making of charts. True it is that some discoveries still remained to 
be made by such men as La Perouse, Vancouver, Bligh, D'Entrecasteaux, Portlock, 
Hampton, Alt, F'linders, Bass, Grant, Murray, Baudin, Hamelin and others ; but the 
days of the great voyages were over — the golden mists of morning, which liid from the 
old-time mariners they knew not what, had lifted before the rays of the rising sun of 
exploration and research. The .spirit of romance which had brooded over the bosom of 
the Ocean for centuries had spread her wings and tied. Her seas were fathomed and 
her islets charted, her lands were measured and labelled, and the world began to shrink 
beneath the meridians and parallels that bound it in. Cook appears like the last figure 
of a mighty procession stretching away through the centuries till it is lost in the mists 
of antiquity. But in what a muster-roll of heroes his name is written ! From that pale 
past when Jason gave a legend to his country's mythic lore, from days of viking pirate 
and the time of that Erik who first put foot upon a Western Continent, down to De 
Gama, Columbus, Magalhaens, De Leon, Balboa, Drake, Raleigh, De Ouiros, Tasman, 
Dampier and Cook, the world may read in the history of the .Sea, a record of the 
greatest courage, the firmest hope, the most beautiful enthusiasm, the most heroic forti- 
tude and the sublimest faith, enlisted in the effort to solve the unknown something that 
hung like a pall upon the verge of Ocean, the mystery of that other-where which 
ever)' child experiences when he watches the sun go down behind the western waves. 

A fine tribute has been paid to the memory of Cook by his latest biographer, 
Walter Besant, in the following words : — " It seems idle to add anything concerning the 
character of James Cook to what has gone before. He was hard to endure, true to 
carry out his mission, perfectly loyal and single-minded, he was fearless, he was hot- 
tempered and impatient, he was self-reliant, he asked none of his subordinates for help 
or for advice, he was temperate, strong, and of simple tastes, he was born to a hard 
life, and he never murmured however hard things proved. And, like all men born to 
be great, when he began to rise, with each .step he assumed, as if it belonged to him, the 
dignity of his new rank. A plain man, those who knew him say, but of good manners." 

Of Cook's services to mankind, Besant writes : — " Such as his achievements required, 
such he was. Let us, however, once more repeat briefly what those achievements were, 
because they were so great and splendid, and because no other sailor has ever so 
greatly enlarged the borders of the earth. He discovered the Society Islands ; he proved 
New Zealand to be two islands and he surveyed its coasts ; he followed the unknown 
coast of New Holland for two thousand miles and proved that it was separated from 
New Guinea ; he traversed the Antarctic Ocean on three successive voyages, sailing 
completely round the globe in its high latitudes, and proving that the dream of the 



I 




1 



A FOREST GLADE IN TROPICAL AUSTRALIA. 



CAPTAIN COOK. 



47 



Great Southern Continent had no foundation, unless it was close around the Pole and so 
beyond the reach of ships; he discovered and explored a great part of the coast of 
New Caledonia, the largest island in the South Pacific next to New Zealand ; he found 
the desolate island of Georgia, and Sandwichland, the southernmost land yet known; he 




SHAKESPEARE HEAD, MERCURY BAY, NEW ZEALAND. 

THE HEADLAND Off WHICH CAPTAIN COOK ERECTED HIS OBSERVATORY. 



discovered the fair and fertile archipelago called the Sandwich Islands ; he explored 
three thousand five hundred miles of the North American Coast, and he traversed the 
icy seas of the North Pacific, as he had done in the south, in search of the passage 
which he failed to discover. All this, without counting the small islands which he found 
scattered about the Pacific. Again, he not only proved the existence of these islands, 
but he was in advance of his a<re in the observations and the minute examination which 
he made into the religion, manners, customs, arts, and language of the natives wherever 
he went. It was he who directed these inquiries, and he was himself the principal 



48 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



observer. When astronomical observations had to be made it was he who acted as 
principal astronomer. He was as much awake to the importance of botany, especially of 
medicinal plants, as he was to the laying down of a correct chart. It is certain that 
there was not in the whole of the King's Navy any officer who could compare with 
Cook in breadth and depth of knowledge, in forethought, in the power of conceiving 
great designs, and in courage and pertinacity in carrying them through. Let us always 
think of the Captain growing only more cheerful as his ship forced her way southwards, 
though his men lay half-starved and half-poisoned on the deck." 

Besant rightly renders full meed of praise to Cook for his struggles to vanquish, on 
long sea-voyages, the terrible pest of scurvy, which, prior to his efforts in this direction, 
had decimated the crews in a wholesale fashion. He says: — "His voyages would have 
been impossible, his discoveries could not have been made, but for that invaluable dis- 
covery of his whereby scurvy was kept off, and the men enabled to remain at sea long 
months without a change. I have called attention to the brief mention he makes of 
privation and hardships ; he barely notes the accident by which half his company were 
poisoned by fish, he says nothing about the men's discomforts when their biscuit was 
rotten. These things, you see, are not scurvy. One may go hungry for a while, but 
recover when food is found, and is none the worse ; one gets sick of salt junk, but if 
scurvy is averted, mere disgust is not worth observation. To drive off scurvy — to keep 
it off — was the greatest boon that any man could confer upon sailors. Cook has the 
honour and glory of finding out the way to avert this scourge. Those who have read 
of this horrible disease — the tortures it entailed, the terror it was on all long voyages 
will understand how great should be the gratitude of the country to this man. Since 
the disease fell chiefly upon the men before the mast, it was fitting that one who had 
also in his youth run up the rigging to the music of the boatswain's pipe should discover 
that way and confer that boon." With these noble words of hone.sr admiration for a 
good man and a great sailor, who opened, up a continent for settlement by England, let 
us take our leave of the grandest figure in the history of maritime discovery since the 
days of the heroic Genoese who gave a continent to Spain. 





UUS. WlLLlAX llKNBT bUTTOB, M. L. 0. 




Ueoboe K. Dibbs, M.P. 




Hon. Edmund Bauton, Q.C, M.I..C. 




Sib Henry Farkes, K.C.M.G,, 
President of the Convention. 





Hon. .Joseph Palueb Abbott, Speaker L. A. 




Sir Patbick Jennings, K. CM. G. 



Hon. William McMillan, M.P. 
THE NEW SOUTH WALES DELEG.VTES T(» illE FEDER.\TION CONVENTION, SYDNEY, 1891. 




s^■|)^•Kv covK. august 20, 1788. 

PACVSIHII^ OF AN OLD PRINT, FROM A SKETCH BV GOVERNOR HLNTEK 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALP:S. 



EARLY SETTLEMENT. 



T T was in 1779 that the greatest navigator of the eighteenth century, James Cook, 
-*■ fell by the hands of savages in the remote island of Hawaii, and the same year 
is memorable for the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons for the 
purpose of devising some means for the relief of the gaols, which were then over-crowded 
with criminals ; and only thirteen years after the date of Cook's landing at Botany Bay, 
the question of colonizing the territory he had discovered was already a practical one in 
England. This first attempt to colonize Australia was, moreover, part of a great and 
beneficent change in the criminal laws of the mother-country. Men were turning away 
with horror from the reckless sacrifice of human life that had for centuries characterized 
the administration of justice in " Merrie England " — from that ferocity which had hanged 
two thousand persons annually throughout the reign of King Henry VHI., and even a 
greater number in the reign of Queen Elizabeth — from that judicial cruelty which boiled 
a man alive in the public streets of London during the time of Shakespeare. The 
wretch who stole an article of the value of five shillings forfeited his life as the price 
of his crime, and took his place with a score of others at Tyburn, on the Monday 
morning, to be hanged in the presence of a crowd who assembled early, and brought 
their breakfasts with them in order to witness the spectacle. So outrageous became the 
number of executions in England that the royal prerogative was continually being called 
into requisition to commute the death sentence to one of banishment for life. The criminal 
had to seek some foreign shore, and if he returned summary execution awaited him. 



50 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

At this time England had just started on her great career of colonization in North 
America, and thither the exiles for the most part wandered. After a time the Govern- 
ment began to provide a passage for those who were thus forced into exile, and who 
had no money to take them over the Atlantic ; but before a century had passed the 
number who had to be transported at the State expense became so excessive as to be 
a severe tax on the royal revenue ; and, as the colonists were eager to secure the 
services of the men, it was discovered to be a profitable arrangement to put them up 
to auction. Not that they were sold as slaves, but their services were disposed of to 
the planters for a term of years ; and as the planters took the utmost out of these 
exiles that could be got, and left them the merest wrecks at the end of their period 
of service, it was generally thought that undisguised slavery might have been preferable. 

The loss of the American colonies in 1776 completely put an end to this system, 
and it was about the same time that ideas of a more humane tendency began to take 
root in England. A few philanthropical writers began to argue that crime was to a great 
extent the result of deficient social organization. The criminal became more an object of 
pity and consideration than he had ever been before. Hence arose the new idea of 
treating him with more leniency, of endeavouring to show him the superior happiness 
and wisdom of virtue, and of enabling him to obtain a fresh start in life. 

It was in 1779 that the first effort was made to reduce these principles to practice, 
and this great reform must be forever connected with the names of Blackstone, Eden, 
and Howard. By an Act passed in that year, provision was made for the establishment 
of large penitentiaries, and of hulks in which prisoners were to be detained with a view 
to their reclamation. But by the reformers it was urged, with sufficient wisdom, that the 
reclaimed prisoner, when set free in the midst of his former haunts, was very apt, or 
even certain, to relapse : the influence of old companions and ever-constant temptations 
would be too much for him. It was proposed, therefore, to form a colony of these unfor- 
tunate people, and the famous Minister, William Pitt, who was then in power, took up 
the idea with commendable largeness of view, and a Bill was passed by the English 
Parliament for the transportation of offenders to some place " beyond the seas," the 
Government intending to give every one a chance of eventually forming for himself a new 
home and an honourable career, under a different sky and with wholly altered surroundings. 

Viscount Sydney was the Secretary for the Colonies in Pitt's Cabinet, and to him 
was assigned the duty of putting into practice the designs of the Government. As it 
was anticipated that the proposed colony would at first prove costly, a Special Vote was 
to be passed annually in Parliament to provide the necessary funds. 

So far all was suitably arranged ; but now came the question — Where should this 
colony be planted ? Many places were spoken of ; but as Cook's voyages had just been 
published, and had attracted more notice than any previous record of travels, many men's 
thoughts turned instinctively to those charming lands of the South, and fixed hopefully 
on Botany Bay, that agreeabre coast which figures so pleasantly in Cook's narrative, and 
after much discussion this was at length selected as the spot for the new experiment. 

The condition of the gaols, however, granted but brief space for consideration. The 
American ports had been closed to English convict ships, and the situation became one 
of daily-increasing difficulty; hence the appointment of a Committee, whose chief duty 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



51 



\ 



it was to advise the Government what to do with the surplus convicts of the land, since 

the trans-Atlantic plantations were no longer available for their reception. The recent 

publication of selections from the " Brabourne Papers " throws an entirely new light on 

this and many other incidents connected with the early days of the colony, which have 

hitherto been more or less incorrectly stated. The principal witness examined before the 

Committee was Sir Joseph 

Banks, then President of the 

Royal Society, who was 

accepted, on account of his 

past experience, as the most 

trustworthy authority on the 

subject of Australia. Banks 

expressed himself in very 

favourable terms about Botany 

Bay as a field for a penal 

settlement, and by the variety 

and value of his knowledge, 

as well as by his earnestness, 

succeeded in the not very 

difificult task of convincing the 

Committee, whose report in 

favour of the scheme was 

agreed to by the House. 

Nevertheless nearly four 
years elapsed before any active 
steps were taken to carry the 
scheme into effect ; years 

during which Howard, Bentham, and other philanthropists constantly interested themselves 
in the endeavour to improve the condition of the wretched prisoners ; and it was not 
until peace had been declared with the United States that the Government attempted to 
consider seriously the advice given by Banks with regard to the criminal colonization 
of Australia. It was about this time that a proposition was made to the Government by 
a gentleman named James Maria Matra, on behalf of the American colonists who had 
lost their property, and whose homes had been ruined by the war. Matra's proposition 
was to create of New -South Wales " a colony that might in time atone for the loss 
of the American colonies ; and to people it with such American colonists as had 
remained loyal, and had suffered for their loyalty to the Crown during the war." This 
he considered could be done at a cost of ^^3000, and with very great advantages to 
England, but the proposal was not favourably received. 

Two years later a similar proposition was made by Sir George Young, a naval officer 
who had served with distinction against the French in Canada, and who was in this sup- 
ported by Sir Joseph Banks. One of the suggestions of the latter was, that "any number of 
useful inhabitants might be drawn from China," to assist in forming the new colony, "agree- 
ably to an invariable custom of the Dutch in forming or recruiting their eastern settlements." 




VISCOUNT SYDNEY. 



52 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

In the meantime the over-crowded condition of the gaols was constantly forced upon 
the attention of the authorities, and the official plan already alluded to for disposing of 
the convicts was drawn up and approved by Lord Sydney, who presided at the Home 
Office. Matra and Sir George Young again persistently urged the claims of the distressed 
American colonists ; but the colonization of Australia by free settlers had to give way to 
the necessities of the time, and by an Order in Council, made on the 6th of Decem- 
ber, 1 786, " the eastern coast of New South Wales was declared and appointed to be 
the place to which certain offenders should be transported." 

The decision of the Cabinet produced a feeling of great interest. The imaginations 
of people were singularly fired by this idea of founding so novel a colony so far from 
Home, on a shore which it was well known would provide but little by its own fruitful- 
ness, whatever it might give in return for the industry of the settlers. In 1786 
advertisements appeared in the English papers for a number of ships to be chartered 
for this unusual service. They were required to carry about a thousand persons, with 
all the implements that a colony could want, as well as provisions for two years. 

Preliminaries were soon arranged for giving effect to the decision of the Govern- 
ment, but much care was necessary in the selection of a Commander, and the choice 
happily fell on Captain Arthur Phillip — a man whom long training in the Navy had 
accustomed to discipline and method, and yet one whose gentle heart could feel for the 
misfortunes of the poor exiles under his care. How much of the ultimate success of 
the plan was due to the calm and even mind, the hopeful and generous disposition, 
that lay behind the sweetness of those features, so pinched and pale with illness, it is 
difficult even now to estimate. 

The Government wisely resolved to trust a great deal to the discretion of the 
leader of the expedition, and while giving him a commission as Captain-General and 
Governor-in-Chief over the eastern part of Australia, all the rest of that Continent being 
claimed by the Dutch, they allowed the utmost latitude to his own judgment, although 
careful instructions were forwarded to him as to the aims and purposes of the expedition. 

An East Indiaman, the Bcrzoick, was bought, and re-christened the Siriiis : she was 
armed with twenty guns, and fitted out to act as frigate to the expedition, and it was 
intended that she should remain in the service of the future colony. Captain John 
Hunter was appointed to the command of this vessel, and a smart little brig, called the 
Supply, was added as tender. Colonel David Collins was sent out to act as Judge- 
Advocate in the new settlement, and also to perform the duties of Secretary. 

The squadron gathered at the Isle of Wight, and there, on the 13th of May, 1787, 
Captain Phillip hoisted the signal for sailing, and the Fleet swept down the Channel, the 
SjrtJis leading the way. The Hycena, a frigate of twenty-four guns, accompanied the 
expedition to convoy it safely past European shores. The wind was fair and was 
blowing freely, as with plunging prows and swelling sails they pursued their track to 
the coast of Spain. Behind the sprightly Supply came three store-ships, the Golden 
Grove, the Borradale, and the Ftshbuni, all small craft according to our modern notions 
— square-built barques of from two hundred and seventy-five to three hundred and 
seventy-eight tons. Next came four transports, the Prmce of Wales, the Scarborough, 
the Alexander and the Friendship, of which the largest was about four hundred and 



HISTORICAL RF.VIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



S3 



fift\- tons. Lastly, two more transports, clumsy vessels and heavy sailers, the Charlotlc, 
of three hundred and thirty-five, and the Lady Penrhyn, of three hundred and thirty- 
three tons ; and these always lagged behind forcing the others to shorten sail from time 
to time in order to avoid division of the fleet. 

These transports carried into exile five hundred and sixty-four males and one 
hundred and ninety-two females ; also one hundred and sixty-eight soldiers and forty 
officers holding various ranks 
to guard or superintend them, 
five surgeons, and a staff of 
artificers, together with the 
wives of forty of the soldiers 
and a few of their children, 
as also thirteen unfortunate 
little creatures, the offspring 
of convict mothers. Thus 
there were despatched in all 
one thousand and seventeen 
persons to found the new 
settlement at Botany Bay. 

Among the minor details 
which caused Phillip much 
annoyance up to the hour of 
sailing, was the fact that a 
supply of clothing for the 
women convicts had not been 
sent on board ; but it was not 
until the fleet reached Tene- 
riffe that it was discovered 
that they had been sent to 
sea without cartridges for the 
marines' muskets, or musket 

balls, or armourers' tools with which to keep their weapons in order. Everything was 
done that humanity could do to secure the health, and even the comfort of the 
prisoners ; and yet if we could but descend one of those companion-ladders into the 
hold of the Alexander, and see its dingy space lighted only by the hatchways, filled 
with two long lines of hammocks swinging less than a foot and a half apart, with two 
hundred and thirty human creatures packed in suffocating rows, we should, perhaps, have 
sympathized to some extent with those who in after years descanted on the horrors of 
the passage. As for the convicts themselves, many were utterly broken down by the 
nameless mystery of the voyage. They had no knowledge whither they were going ; 
but had vaguely heard that it was to the opposite side of the world, to a land only 
once seen by civilized men, and inhabited by hostile savages. Others took the future 
witli the callous indifference of low natures, and sought only to gather as much ease 
for the time being as they could bully or cozen out of their neighbours. 




CAPTAIN ARTHUR PHILI.II>. 

THE FIBST GOVERNOR OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



54 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

They were well fed, but in the tropics suffered from the confinement of their 
narrow quarters in the hold ; and no sooner had the humanity of the captains allowed 
them a little liberty, and permission to walk by turns on the deck, than the prisoners 
on board the Scarborough formed a desperate conspiracy for escape, and the concessions 
that had been granted were revoked. The Fleet reached Rio Janeiro without disaster, 
and after "refreshing" there held over to the Cape of Good Hope, where also it called 
to obtain fresh water and a supply of live stock for the intended colony. 

On leaving the Cape, Captain Phillip went on board the Siipply, and, with three 
fast sailing transports, proceeded ; leaving the seven slower vessels to follow as best they 
could. The Governor's desire was to make his choice of a suitable locality, and to be pre- 
pared to land his charges whenever they arrived. On the i8th of January, 1788, the 
Supply stood in through the entrance to Botany Bay, and anchored in the shelter of 
South Head, being soon after joined by the transports. Thus after a voyage of thirty- 
six weeks from Portsmouth, during which only thirty-two lives were lost, from all causes, 
including accidents, the Fleet arrived at its destination in safety ; justifying the comment 
of Judge-Advocate Collins that : — " This fortunate completion of it afforded even to our- 
selves as much matter of surprise as of general satisfaction ; for in the above space of 
time we had sailed five thousand and twenty-one leagues, had touched at the American 
and African continents, and had at last rested within a few days' sail of the antipodes 
of our native country, without meeting with any accident in a fleet of eleven sail, nine 
of which were merchantmen that had never before sailed in that distant and so imper- 
fectly explored ocean." 

Phillip's instructions to form a settlement on the shores of Botany Bay, as suggested 
by Banks, did not meet with his approval. He found himself in a beautiful inlet, 
seemingly round, and of some six or seven miles in diameter ; its shores were not high, 
but behind the long curves of white and yellow beaches there were pleasant, tree-clad 
undulations, green and fresh to eyes that had finished an eight months' voyage. But on 
landing he was greatly disappointed ; the ground was either rocky or covered with 
barren sand, and no water was visible, except where extensive swamps seemed to threaten, 
in this warm climate, a plentiful experience of fever in the future. But Captain Phillip 
had hardly finished his examination when the remaining seven vessels arrived. The Bay 
being shallow, he could not find anchorage for all his ships in deep water, and some 
lay dangerously exposed to the swell that rolled through the entrance. 

Longer confinement in these close vessels beneath that blazing summer sky being 
attended with the greatest risk, Phillip was compelled to make the necessary preparations 
for debarking, but resolved, in the meantime, to examine the inlets of the neighbouring 
coast, in the hope of finding a better harbour than Botany Bay. With three ships' 
boats he steered out into the Pacific, and turned north along the shore. Sailing 
under the heavy cliffs, and along the hot and glaring beaches for a distance of eight 
or nine miles, he passed into the little opening or boat-harbour set down by Cook as 
Port Jackson. On each side there frowned grim-looking rocks of considerable height ; but 
what was his surprise to find this channel open out into a noble harbour, winding away 
to the west in numberless arms and bays with verdant shores and sunny little islets, all 
sleeping in sheltered silence under the delicately-tinted blue of an unbroken Australian sky. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



55 



Phillip, Hunter and Collins were all charmed by the beauty and security of this 
port. Here on these high and well-drained shores was no fear of fever; and when, 
after examining bay after bay, they lay on their oars in admiration within a small tree- 
shadowed cove into which a little babbling stream discharged its limpid waters, Phillip 
determined there to fix his colony; and he gave to the place the name of Sydney Cove, 




PHILLIPS FIRST LANDING-PLACE, BOTANY BAY. 

FROM A RECENT SKETCH. 



in honour of the Secretary of State, under whose 
directions the expedition had been carried out. 

The little bay was deep, and surrounded by 
large boulders rising only a few feet above the 
surface, out of twenty feet of water, and in that 
the Governor saw much prospect of convenience. But to be certain that this was the 
best situation, he spent three days in sailing into every arm, being every-where pleased, 
yet finding no reason to alter his choice. His first interview with the natives was at 
a pretty little inlet near the Heads, where some of them who had been fishing came 
forward in response to a signal, and encouraged by his kindly smile showed him some 
of the fish that they had caught, and their rude appliances for fishing. They retired 
with quiet dignity, and Phillip was so pleased with their bearing that he gave to the 
place the name of Manly Beach. 

When the boats returned to Botany Bay it was found that wells were being sunk 
and wharves constructed, but on the joyful news being spread of the grand harbour 
discovered, all was alacrity to depart. At day-break the anchors were being weighed, and 
the echoes of the sailors' chorus were rolling over the bay, when the unexpected 
appearance of two vessels off the port attracted attention ; they ran up French colours 
and proved to be the BoussoU and the Astrolabe — an expedition of discover^' under Admiral 



56 



A US TRA LA SI A ILL US TRA TED. 



La Perouse. Captain Phillip sailed out in the Supply, and gave a welcome to the 
celebrated Frenchman, whose ships came to an anchor in Botany Bay just as the ten 
English vessels were leaving. The convict squadron was soon within the shelter of Port 
Jackson, and in the evening all the men were assembled, the Union Jack was run up 
to the top of a. flag-staff that had just been erected, and with three volleys they 
signalized the termination of their long and dreary voyage. 

A canvas house was put up for the Governor on the east side of the Cove, and 
round it was formed a small garden wherein might be cultivated the fig, the orange and 
the grape, of which young plants had been brought from the Cape. The live stock was 
landed, and on the 6th of February, when the settlement began to look a little com- 
fortable, the women went on shore. On the following day the marines were drawn up 
in a square, on a slope afterwards known as Dawes' Point, and the Governor's commis- 
sion was read. He then addressed the convicts, and in a speech of much earnestness 
besought them to consult their own happiness and welfare by leading praiseworthy lives 
in their new abode. 

Judged by his correspondence, which has but recently been published in the work 
already quoted, Phillip had an arduous time of it in arranging all the details of the 
great undertaking which had been entrusted to his command. He appears to have made 
written notes of any ideas that occurred to him in connection with it, and in a marked 
degree these notes display the keen foresight and judgment which distinguished the man ; 
many of them betray only his want of knowledge of the land in which he was about 
to settle ; and some are absolutely quaint in their suggestiveness : As, for instance, in 
referring to the probable necessity for inflicting capital punishment on the convicts, he 
says : — " I should think it will never be necessary. In fact I doubt if the fear of death 
ever prevented a man of no principle from committing a bad action. There are two 
crimes that would merit death, and for either of them I should wish to confine the 
criminal till an opportunity offered of delivering him as a prisoner to the natives of New 
Zealand, and let them eat him. The dread of this will operate much stronger than the 
fear of death " And again, in contemplation of the social and domestic difficulties of the 
position, which might well have alarmed a more worldly-minded man than the conscien- 
tious sailor, he says : — " The women (convicts) in general, I should suppose, possess 
neither virtue nor honesty. . . . The natives may, it is probable, permit their women 
to marry the men (convicts) after a certain time. . . . Women may be brought from 
the Friendly and other islands, a proper place prepared to receive them, and where 
they will be supported for a time, and lots of land assigned to such as marry with the 
soldiers of the garrison." Then, with perhaps some prevision of the future greatness of 
the nation he was about to found with such unpromising materials, he writes : — " As I 
would not wish convicts to lay the foundation of an empire. I think they should ever 
remain separated from the garrison and other settlers that ma)- come from Europe ; and 
not be allowed to mix with them, even after the seven or fourteen years for which they 
are transported may be expired." 

A hard task, however, lay before him, for he had been instructed by the English 
Government to make the colony self-supporting, and two years were allowed in which to 
secure by farming and other industries at least half the sustenance of the people under his 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE NEW SOUTH WALES, 



57 



\ 



\ 



charge. As Norfolk Island had been praised by Cook for its fertility, it was thought 
desirable to commence farming operations there ; and being overrun with Hax— a commodity 
in great demand— it was believed that the convicts could secure in its growth and pre- 
paration a very respectable sum to contribute to their support. Lieutenant King was 
therefore sent to the 
island with fifteen con- 
victs, nine soldiers, a sur- 
geon, and two free men 
who understood flax dress- 
ing. The settlement pros- 
pered, and thirty - nine 
persons more were sent 
over a few months later. 

It was in the month 
of March that La Perouse 
sailed from Botany Bay.. 
What became of him, or 
his two well-appointed ves- 
sels and their crews, was 
a mystery unsolved for 
thirty-eight years, though 
the French sent an expe- 
dition to search for their 
celebrated sailor. But in 
the year 1826 Captain 
Peter Dillon, of the East 
India Company's service, 

was cruising in these seas, and on the coast of Vanikoro, the most southerly island of 
the Santa Cruz Group, he came upon unmistakable signs of shipwreck. These were the 
remains of La Perouse's expedition, and they told its fate. In 1883 Lieutenant Benier, 
in the Bniat, recovered some guns, anchors, chains and other relics, and took them to 
France, where they were deposited in the Museum of Paris. In memory of the cele- 
brated Frenchman, a monument was erected by the people of Sydney on the north 
shore of Botany Bay, near the last place where he is known to have touched the land. 
Not far from the same place there was buried the French priest, M. Le Receveur, who 
accompanied La Perouse as naturalist, and who, while prosecuting his researches, had 
been speared by the natives of the Navigator's Islands, but had lingered on till he died 
of his wounds, when he received a grave on Australian soil. 

The glowing prospects entertained by Governor Phillip died away very quickly when 
the colonists settled down into stern reality after the novelty of their arrival. Famine 
was the great danger, and a series of unlucky accidents made it doubtful for a time 
whether the colony was to survive this initial trouble. A piece of land at Rose Hill — now 
called Parramatta, at the head of a deep salt-water reach popularly regarded as a river — 
was placed under crop, but the prospect it afforded was not at all one of lavish 




JEAN FRANCOIS GALAUP, COMTE DE LA PEROUSE. 



58 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



abundance. The convicts were many of them incorrigibly idle, and improvident beyond 
belief. The weekly allowance given them was consumed and wasted during the first 
day or two. and then in the destitution of the latter part of the week they came with 
pitiful appeals to the Governor for relief. One man, on receiving his week's allowance, 
eight pounds of flour, made it into cakes, consumed the whole at a meal, and died 
next day of the surfeit. The stores were constantly broken into and the provisions 
carried off. The men put to work on the farms broke or secreted their tools, careless 
of the fact that their indolence might mean want of food. A convict who had been 
set to watch the few head of cattle that had been brought to the colony negligently 
allowed them to stray away. When they were discovered some years afterwards, on the 
banks of the Nepean, their number had increased to sixty. In addition to all these 
troubles, Phillip suffered considerable annoyance from his military subordinates, strained 
relations having existed between himself and Major Ross, who was at the head of the 
small force, ever since their landing. Phillip was anxious that the officers should use 
their personal and moral influence in dealing with the convicts, while the officers, on the 
other hand, stood on their dignity, and declined to accept his .suggestions. A series of 
petty squabbles and irritations, fomented by Major Ross, who was supported by his 
brother officers, eventually resulted in the Major being dispatched to Norfolk Island, 
with a commission as Lieutenant-Governor. 

The first stone for the foundation of a temporary Government House was laid by 
the Governor in Pitt Street on the 15th of May, 1788. In November the ration of 
each man, including officers and the Governor alike, was reduced by a third, and in 
March, 1 790, as the stock of provisions was becoming alarmingly low, two hundred and 
eighty persons were sent over to Norfolk Island, where it was thought there would 
soon be plenty. The Siriiis was to take them over, and then to sail to Europe to 
procure provisions for the colony at Sydney. But as she neared the island heavy 
weather set in ; she was standing off and on to land the people, when suddenly the 
vessel was driven on to the rocks and lost. The passengers and crew were saved, but 
their effects were destroyed. Then came the disappointing news to the half-drowned 
men and women who landed, that just the month before the island had been visited 
by a hurricane, which had swept away granaries, casks, bags and crops in one wild 
confusion. What the winds had spared a rising flood had carried away. When this 
news reached Sydney the Governor still further decreased the ration, and parties were 
sent out to supplement the fast-diminishing stores by fishing and shooting. 

In June there arrived another transport with two hundred and twenty-two female 
prisoners ; and the sad intelligence was brought that the Guardian, store-ship, after 
rounding the Cape of Good Hope, had struck an iceberg, and to save the vessel nearly 
the whole of a two years' supply of provisions had to be thrown overboard, while with 
the rest she returned to the Cape for repairs. 

Again the daily ration was reduced, till it was little more than a quarter of that 
which had at first been issued. A curious illustration of the scarcity of food is to be 
found m the fact that during the severest pinch persons who were invited to dine with 
the Governor were requested to bring their own fare with them. The Supply was sent 
for provisions to Batavia. She would be absent at least six months, and at the decreased 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



59 




THE TOMB OF LE RECEVEUR AT BOTANY BAY. 



rate there were just eight months' stores left in the colony. While the Governor was 
racked with anxiety, the Justinian arrived at the Heads. She brought a considerable 
quantity of stores with her. But just as she was standing in, the wind changed, and 
blew with such violence out to sea, that she was driven a long way to the north and 
nearly wrecked ; indeed, the colonists had lost all hope of seeing her, when after all her 
perils she once more appeared, 
and to the great joy of the 
community entered the Harbour 
in safety. But their happiness 
was damped by the arrival, a few 
days later, of three more trans- 
ports, bringing a large number 
of prisoners and a detachment of 
the New South Wales Corps — a 
body of soldiers enlisted in Eng- 
land for special service in the 
colony, to which ordinary soldiers 
disliked to go. These vessels 
broug^ht no provisions, but they 
brought to the famishing colony 
a fever-stricken crowd that filled the hospital with patients and the residents with dismay. 

In the beginning of 1791 things began to brighten. The Supply, accompanied by a 
chartered vessel, arrived from Batavia loaded with provisions which more than doubled 
the stores of the colony. Crops began to be gathered at Rose Hill. A number of free 
men, mostly soldiers or sailors, obtained grants of land, and began farming in something 
like a systematic way. And so matters went smoothly forward till September, when nine 
more vessels arrived, bringing with them over two thousand fresh convicts ; but as they 
brought abundance of supplies, the famine troubles of the colony were practically over. 
In the following year, Phillip, whose health had been gradually declining, petitioned the 
Home Government to relieve him of his arduous duties and allow him to return to 
England. After some delay his request was granted, and on the loth of December, 
1793, he took his departure, after a command of five years. His memory will always be 
held in respect, not only as that of the first Governor, but as that of a man who, 
under the most trying conditions, did at all times what he believed to be his duty, and 
when he left the colony it was with the respect and esteem of all classes and amid 
public expressions of general regret. 

The Government of the colony now passed into the hands of Major Francis Grose, 
Commandant of the New South Wales Corps, who had just arrived bearing a commission 
as Lieutenant-Governor, and the appointment of this officer initiated a condition of 
affairs which was practically a military despotism. Events soon began to show that he 
was not qualified for his position. The good order established by Governor Phillip 
speedily disappeared. The source of Grose's misgovernment appeared to lie in his 
sympathy with his brother officers. He superseded the civil magistrates and appointed 
ofificers in their place ; he disregarded the express instructions of the Imperial Govern- 



6o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

ment, not only in making extravagant grants of land to the officers, but also in allowing 
them an excessive supply of convict labour — thirteen servants each, instead of two ; and 
he permitted them to pay for labour with spirits instead of money, in order that they 
might make enormous profits on the sale. Spirits were sold to the officers at the 
Government stores at prime cost, and were retailed by them at any price they pleased. 
It had always been Phillip's policy to prevent the convicts from obtaining spirits, knowing 
that otherwise he could not hope to preserve discipline among them — still less to reform 
them. But no sooner had he left the colony than the military and civil officers of the 
establishment eagerly seized the opportunity for making money by this traffic ; the result 
being that habits of drunken debauchery spread throughout the settlement, everything 
being sacrificed to an insane craving for drink. The officers made it their business to 
import spirits and wine, not only from England, but from India, the Brazils and the 
Cape of Good Hope. As soon as it became known abroad that a good trade could be 
done in Sydney Cove with spirits, cargoes were shipped from all parts of the world. 
Indian merchants, in particular, at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, exerted themselves to 
secure as much of the infamous traffic as possible ; just as in later years their country- 
men and successors strove their utmost to extend the opium trade with China. The 
opportunity of acquiring large areas of land was also too good to be neglected ; and 
immense blocks, which were then of comparatively little value, passed into the hands of 
men whose only claim to consideration was that of cleaving hard and fast to their 
traditions, and upholding might as right. 

Under this system of misgovernment was thus laid the foundations of an Australian 
landed aristocracy, and unscrupulous men were not slow in taking advantage of their 
official positions, to the great detriment of the welfare and morals of the community. 
Another item of public interest which characterized the military interregnum was the 
arrival, in the month of January, 1793, of the Bcllona, the first ship to bring out free 
settlers. They were supplied with tools and two years' provisions by the Government, 
also with a proportion of convict labour, and they settled on land at Liberty Plains, 
which, however, they soon abandoned, and migrated to the banks of the Hawkesbury. 

Governor Huntkr. 

The difficulties occasioned by the military misrule inaugurated by Major Grose 
severely taxed the energies of the three Governors who next succeeded. The Home 
Government having become aware of the state of things in Sydney under Major Grose, and 
latterly Captain Paterson — who succeeded Grose as Lieutenant-Governor in December, 
'794 — determined to remedy the mischief by suppressing the traffic in spirits altogether. 
Captain John Hunter, formerly of the Sirius, was appointed Governor in 1795, with express 
instructions for that purpose, but although he honestly endeavoured to carr)- them out, 
he was not strong enough to resist the official ring by which he was surrounded, and he 
gradually allowed himself to sink under its influence. The result was that his feeble 
efforts at reform ended in signal failure, and he was recalled in 1800. 

A year after the wreck of the Sirius at Norfolk Island, in March, 1790, Captain 
Hunter had sailed from Sydney to Batavia in a Dutch vessel, which had been chartered 
by Governor Phillip. From that port he sailed for England, where he arrived in the 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



6i 




THE LA I'EROUSE MONUMENT. 



I 



following year. While at Home he wrote and published his " Historical Journal of the 
Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island." During his subsequent term of ofifice 
as Governor, he took an active interest in the work of exploration, a subject which 
naturally engaged the attention of all the early Governors, and many discoveries were made. 

It was during Hunter's Administration that the gallant Surgeon Bass, accompanied by 
Lieutenant Flinders, explored 
the south-eastern coast in a 
little open boat, only eight 
feet long, called the To7n 
TJuimh, and a year later, sail- 
ing south again, 
they entered West- 
ern Port, when their 
provisions being ex- 
hausted they were 
compelled to return 
to Sydney. In their 
next voyage they 
discovered the pas- 
sage since known 
to the world as 
Bass's Straits, sailed 
round the coast of \'an Dienien's Land, and completely demonstrated its insular character. 

Another discovery was made during Hunter's time, which has since been identified 
with his name. In June, 1796, some fishermen were driven by stress of weather into 
what seemed to them to be a small ba)-, but which was really the mouth of a large 
river. Landing there, they found coal lying on the surface of the ground. The town 
of Newcastle now stands on the spot ; and the river, well-known as the Hunter, was 
discovered one year later by a military party sent in search of runaway convict.s. 

Hunter's Administration was marked by the restoration of the civil magistrates, whose 
functions had been usurped by the military men during the time of Grose and Paterson. 
The Governor referred to this singular proceeding in a despatch to the Secretary of 
State, in which he said : — " After the departure of Governor Phillip, a general change 
took place. All his plans and regulations were completely laid aside. The civil magis- 
trates were superseded entirely, and all the duties respecting the distribution of justice, 
and every other concern of that ofiice, was taken into the hands of the military." At 
the same time they had used their powers to obtain a complete monopoly of trade. 
They were not only magistrates, but they were general merchants and importers as well ; 
and by this means they had made themselves so powerful in every direction that Hun- 
ter found it difficult to exercise any kind of authority over them. 

The progress of settlement in the colony at this time was checked by the spread 
of this degrading traffic. Everything was sacrificed to the dealers in rum. Out of 
nearly eleven thousand acres cleared in 1800, only seven thousand were under cultiva- 
tion. The reason will be found in a despatch from Governor King, written in 



62 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



December, 1801 : — "It is notorious that since Governor Phillip left this colony in 1792, 
the utmost licentiousness has prevailed among this class (settlers who had been convicts), 
although they have used the most laborious exertions in clearing land of timber. 
Unfortunately, the produce went to a few monopolizing traders, who had their agents in 
ever)' corner of the settlement, not failing to ruin those they marked for their prey by 
the baneful lure of spirits. It can scarce be credited that, in a soil and climate equal 
to the production of any plant or vegetable, out of four hundred and five settlers 
scarce one grew either potato or cabbage. Growing wheat and maize, which are the 
articles required by the public stores (and which were paid for in spirits), was their 
only object ; and when that has been attained, it has often occurred that one night's 
drinking at the house of one of those agents has eased them of all their labour had 
acquired in the preceding year." Such were the evils which Hunter saw around him, 
but vainly tried to remed)-. 

In other directions, however, some progress was made. A small newspaper, the 
Sydney Gazette, was established as the official organ of the Ciovernment ; a church 

was erected on the eastern side 
of the Cove, and a wind-mill on 
I'lag-staff Hill. A play-house was 
also built, and opened with a 
performance by some prisoners of 
Farquhar's comedy, " The Recruit- 
ing-officer," for which a prologue 
was written by the notorious 
George Harrington. A herd of 
wild cattle, the progeny of the 
two bulls and five cows lost in 
1 788, was discovered inland, a 
considerable distance beyond Parra- 
matta, at a place which was called the Cow-pastures. The first public meeting ever held 
in the colony was in June, 1799, for the purpose of raising funds to build a more secure 
gaol (a curious commentary on the administration , of the day), but subscriptions were 
freely given both of money and materials, and the gaol was erected. 







RELICS FROM THE LA PEROUSE EXPEDITION. 

DISCOVERED ON THE VANIKORO REEFS. 



The Introduction ok Wool. 
The mo.st important event connected with Governor Hunter's term of office was the 
inauguration of the great wool-growing industry, the pioneer of which was John 
Macarthur, who arrived in the colony in the year 1791, as a captain of the New South 
Wales Corps. He was a man of unusual sagacity, energy and perseverance, and was 
well qualified to gain distinction in a much larger sphere than that presented to him 
by Sydney at the end of the last century. His ambition was not to be satisfied by 
the profits, large though they were, to be made out of the squalid rum traffic. He 
saw the capabilities of the new country for grazing sheep and cattle, and having a few 
head of both, he determined to utilize the advantages which free grants of land, free 
labour, and the command of a market offered him in his new home. 



k 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



63 




At that time the wool- 
len mills of England were 
supplied with the finer sorts 
of wool from Saxony and 
Spain, where the merino 
sheep had been highly cul- 
tivated. But althouofh the 
Saxons and the Spaniards 
possessed the finest breed 
of sheep in the world, they 
were not large wool-growers, 
and consequently the suppl)- 
of wool in the English 
market was ver)- limited. 
The first thing to be done 
was to introduce the proper 
breed of sheep, not an easy 
matter in those da)s, when 
the pure merino was a rare 
animal every-where except in 
Saxony and in Spain. 

When Governor Phillip 
landed in 1 78<S, he brous/ht 
ashore with him twenty-nine 
sheep, which he had taken 
on board at the Cape of 
Good Hope ; and when he 
left the colony in i 792, the -^ 

little Hock had increased to 
one hundred and five. It 
was in the following year 
that Macarthur commenced 
his operations. The story 
will be best told in his own 
words, as we find them in 
the report of his evidence 
before Mr. Commissioner 
Bigge in 1820: — "In 1794, 

I purchased from an officer , ,; , 

sixty Bengal ewes and 
lambs, which had been im- 
ported from Calcutta, and very soon afterwards I procured from the captain of a 
transport from Ireland, two Irish ewes and a young ram. The Indian sheep produced 
coarse hair, and the wool of the Irish sheep was then valued at no more than ninepence 



■X, 

X) 
r>. 



3i 




< 

O 
n 

o 

A 

H 
Z 



M 



in 




% 



64 



A US TRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




per pound. By crossing the two breeds, I had the satisfaction of seeing the lambs of 
the Indian ewes bear a mingled fleece of hair and wool. This circumstance originated 

the idea of producing 
fine wool in New South 
Wales." 

Two years after- 
wards two sloops of war 
were sent from Sydney 
to the Cape of Good 
Hope, and their com- 
manders being friends of 
Macarthur's, he requested 
them to ascertain whether 
there were an)' wool- 
bearing sheep at the 
Cape. When they arrived 
' they fortunately found 
for sale in the market 
some merinos bred from 
animals of the celebrated 
Escurial Hock, which had 
been presented by the 
King of Spain to the 
Dutch Government, and 
sent to the Cape. About twenty were purchased, and of these, said Macarthur, " I was 
favoured with five ewes and three rams. The remainder were distributed among different 
individuals, who did not take the necessary precautions to preserve the pure breed, 
and they soon disappeared. Mine were carefully guarded against any impure mixtures, 
and increased in number and improved in the quality of their wool. In a year or two 
after I had an opportunity of augmenting my flocks by the purchase from Colonel 
Foveaux of twelve hundred sheep of the common Cape breed. The results soon made 
themselves manifest. In iSoi, I took to England 
specimens of the wool of the pure merino, and 
of the best of the cross-bred ; and, having sub- 
mitted them to the inspection of a committee of 
manufacturers, they reported that the merino wool 
was equal to any Spanish wool, and the cross- 
bred of considerable value. Thus encouraged, I 
purchased nine rams and an ewe from the Royal 
flock at Kew, and returned to this country 
determined to devote my attention to the im- 
provement of the wool of my flocks." 

Then began negotiations with the Imperial Government for the purpose of obtaining 
sufficient pastures for the increasing flocks. Macarthur presented a memorial to the Privy 



CAPTAIN PHILLIPS FIRST SIGHT OK PORT JACKSON. 




THE FIRST GOVERNMENT HOUSE : 
PITT STREET, SYDNEY. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



65 



Council in 1804, when he was in London, praying that he should be allotted sixty 
thousand acres, and thirty convicts as shepherds. The Privy Council summoned him to 
attend in person before them, and give evidence as to the nature of his project. He 
made a favourable impression, although the Council did not recommend that his proposals 
should be accepted. But 
the woollen manufacturers of 
England supported him, and 
their influence speedily 
settled the question. Lord 
Camden, then .Secretary of 
State for the Colonies, sent 
a despatch to Governor 
King, under date of the 
31st of October, 1804, '" 
which he desired His Excel- 
lency to have " a proper 
grant of land, fit for the 
pasture of sheep, conveyed 
to the said John Macarthur, 
Esq., in perpetuity, with the 
usual reserve of quit rents 
to the Crown, containing 
not less than five thousand 
acres." The land now known 
as the Camden Estate, which 
had lieen selected in the 
first instance by the cattle 
that had strayed from the 

settlement in early days, on account of the sweet grass in the whin-stone country, was 
chosen for the purpose. Macarthur died in 1834, and was buried at Camden, the scene 
of one of the most successful enterprises that ever blessed the industry of man. 




GOVEK.NOK JOHN HUNTER. 



Governor King. 

In September, 1800, Governor Hunter sailed for England, where shortly after his 
arrival he was appointed to the command of a line-of-battle ship. Barrington says in 
his "History" that: — "Hunter's departure was attended with every mark of respect and 
regret. The road to the wharf was lined with troops, and he was accompanied by the 
officers of the civil and military departments, with a concourse of inhabitants, who 
showed by their deportment the high sense they entertained of the regard he had ever 
paid to their interests, and of the justice and humanity of his Government." 

The next Governor was Philip Gidley King, who came out with the First Fleet as 
lieutenant of the Sirius, and had been sent in February, 1788, to establish the settle- 
ment at Norfolk Island. He had served as Lieutenant-Governor there until he was 
appointed to administer the Government of New South Wales. He and Phillip had 



66 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



been brother ofificers ; they had always worked cordially together in establishing the 
infant settlements under their charge ; and it was a piece of singular good fortune that 
both of them were admirably qualified for their posts. When King superseded Hunter 

in 1800, he found the 




official monopoly in 
full swing ; but warned 
l)y the fate of his 
predecessor, he set 
himself resolutely to 
the work of reform, 
rhe Royal Instruc- 
tions required him 
" to order and direct 
that no spirits be 
landed from any ves- 
sel coming to Port 
[ackson without your 
consent." He accord- 
ingly issued the most 



strmgcnt 



regulations 



THE cow PASTURES, 
CAMDEN PARK. 



in order to prevent 
the landing of spirits, 
beyond certain speci- 
fied ([uantities, from 
ships arriving in the 
Port ; and in many cases he actually sent back 
the ships without allowing them to land any. 
In 1806, when he left the colony, he had thus 
sent back nearly seventy thousand gallons of 
spirits, and over thirty-one thousand gallons of wine. The 
quantity which he allowed to land was sold at prices fixed 
by his order, ranging from four to ten shillings a gallon. 
The ruling retail price at the time of his arrival was forty 
shillings a gallon ; its prime cost to the importers not being 
more than seven and sixpence to half-a-sovereign. In Hunter's time, eight pounds a 
gallon had been recovered by the plaintiff in open Court, and the judgment which 
allowed this excessive rate was affirmed by that Governor on appeal. 

Whether King was absolutely successful in carrying out his policy of reform is not 
altogether clear, historical authorities being divided on the subject ; but there can be 
no question that he succeeded in doing so to a very considerable extent, and that 
under his rule the settlement made extraordinary progress. It may be said, indeed, 
that the success of the experiment made by the Imperial Government in sending out the 
First Fleet dates from the first year of the century ; and there can be little doubt that 
the result was largely due to the energetic and intelligent Administration of Governor 



HISTORICAL REl'IEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 67 

King. Industry and order took the place of drunkenness and crime. The convicts. 
restrained from unceasin_t,r indulgence in drink, strove hard to earn their freedom by 
attention to discipline and good conduct ; while the settlers, no longer compelled to take 
spirits in payment for their produce, were enabled to extend and miprove their farming 
operations. Schools, churches, and other useful institutions were established by the 




1ti0{m.<JUlJ:. 



MACARTHUKS HOMESTEAD, CAMDEK. 



Government ; children were educated, 
Divine Service was attended, and 
the blessings of social life made themselves 
felt among all classes. Trade and industry 
began to spread their branches in every direc- 
tion, and legitimate commerce was fostered and 
encouraged. Captain John Macarthur had dis- 
covered a source of immense wealth in the 
growth of tine wool ; his Hocks of sheep were now attracting general attention, and 
the most prominent mill-owners of England had begun to look forward to shipments of 
Australian wool. Coal had been found in 1796 at Newcastle and at Bulli. The banks 
of the Hawkesbury and the Nepean had revealed their richness to the settlers, whom 
neither sudden floods nor savage blacks deterred from taking up the land. -Sydney 
Cove was full of shipping from all parts of the world ; vessels were fitted out for 
sealing and whaling voyages in adjacent waters ; trade was opened up with New Zealand 
and the .South Sea Islands. So great was the industrial activity that when the French 
ships Lc Gdographc and Lc Naturaliste, commanded b\' Haudin, and sent out on a 
voyage of discovery, dropped anchor in Sydney Cove on the 20th of June, 1802, the 
Frenchmen regarded with a.stonishment the size and progress of the place; and Peron, 
one of the naturalists attached to the expedition, recorded in his journal with expressions 



68 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



of surprise the many evidences of prosperity he had observed in the infant settlement 
during the five months over which his visit extended. 

It was under the Administration of Governor King that the first settlements were 
formed at V'an Diemen's Land and at Port Phillip. In August, 1803, two vessels were 
dispatched from Sydney for Van Diemen's Land, under the command of Lieutenant 
Bowen, a naval officer. The party landed at Risdon Cove, and formed a settlement 
there. It was about the same time that Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, who had come out 

with the First Fleet as Judge-Advocate, but 
had returned to England, was dispatched 
with another large party in two ships from 
Portsmouth, for the purpose of establishing 
a settlement at Port Phillip. Collins reached 
his destination on the 9th of October, 1 803 ; 
but he sent such unfavourable reports as to 
the nature of the surrounding country, that 
Port Phillip was declared to be " totally 
unfit in every point of view " for the pur- 
pose of settlement. The whole party was 
soon after removed to \'an Diemen's Land ; 
and on arrival there Collins selected a site 
on the beautiful banks of the I])erwent 
River, at a place named by him .Sullivan's 
Cove ; but on the transfer of the settlement 
under Lieutenant Bowen to that spot it 
was named Hobart, and subsequently Hobart 
Town, in honour of Lord Hobart, then 
Secretary of State for the Colonies. 
Alarmed by a rumour that the French intended to form a settlement in Van 
Diemen's Land, King sent, in October, 1802, a party under Lieutenant Charles Robbins. 
in an armed schooner, the Cumberland, " in order to assert His Majesty's claims to the 
territory, and dispossess and remove any party that may be landed there." The Surveyor 
General accompanied the expedition, which was instructed to sail to King's Island, Port 
Phillip and Storm Bay, " taking care to -hoist His Majesty's colours every day on shore 
during your examination of those places, placing a guard of two men at each place, who 
are to turn up ground for a garden, and sow the seeds you are furnished with." 

A naval engagement, which took place off the Sydney Heads, in November, 1804, 
deserves mention as a remarkable incident of the times. An English whaling-ship, the 
Policy, carrying letters of marque and six twelve-pounders, came up with a Dutch ship, 
the Sioift, armed with six eighteen-pounders, and the whaler, after two hours' hard 
fighting, compelled the latter to strike her colours. The prize, with twenty thousand 
Spanish dollars on board, was taken into Port Jackson, condemned and sold. 

When Governor King left the colony in 1806, the population numbered about nine 
thousand ; of land under occupation there were nearly one hundred and sixty-six thou- 
sand acres, of which about twelve thousand acres were cultivated, and over a hundred 




MACARTHUKS TOMH AT CAMDEN. 




IHh ilAW KbM-iL K\ , Ai w laii.viAN S FERRY, 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE NEW SOUTH WALES. 



69 




ciovEKNOK i'hu.ii' gidlkv king. 



and forty-six thousand acres used for grazing ; the number of sheep in the hands of the 

settlers had increased to nearly seventeen thousand ; they owned also over three thousand 

head of cattle, about five hundred horses, fourteen thousand pigs, and three thousand 

goats — these figures include Norfolk Island 

and Van Diemen's Land. Among other 

evidences of progress, it may be mentioned 

that in 1803 a public brewery was established 

at Parramatta, which King hoped would prove 

useful in "preventing the thirst for spirits." 

Factories for the manufacture of wool and 

flax were also set at work, and salt was 

made in pans at Sydney and Newcastle. The 

development of industrial enterprise was at 

all times warmly encouraged by King. 

Governor Bligh. 

William Bligh, a Post-Captain in the Navy, 

succeeded Governor King, in August, 1806. 

His name is associated with the romantic 

event known as the " Mutiny of the Bounty" 

and the official records of the settlement of Australia connect it also with one 
of the most exciting incidents in colonial history. His character and reputation have 
been severely criticised, but he had attained the rank of Post-Captain in the Navy by 
active and honourable service, long before he was appointed to succeed King, and 

seventeen years after the startling and historical 
episode with which the annals of South Pacific 
discovery are indissolubly linked. He sailed for 
Tahiti in 1787, in command of His Majesty's 
ship Bojintv, for the express purpose of trans- 
planting the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies. 
But he stayed so long in this lovely isle 
that, as some say, his crew fell in love with 
the dark-eyed beauties whom they found under 
the bread-fruit trees and were seized with a 
desire to spend their lives among them. Others 
assert that the men were driven into rebellion 
by their Commander's extreme harshness and 
severity of discipline. Be that as it may, when 
they put to sea again, the acting-lieutenant of 
the Bounty, Fletcher Christian, instigated the 
men to mutiny, and succeeded in getting possession of the vessel. Bligh was put 
into the ship's launch, with eighteen of his crew who remained faithful to him, and 
set adrift on the wide ocean. They had a compass and a quadrant, but neither chart 
nor almanac ; and as there was very little chance of sighting a ship in that part of 




GOVERNOR WILLIA.M BLIGH. 



70 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

the ocean they steered for the Indian Archipelago ; although they might have made for 
the new settlement at Port Jackson, which had been founded just a year before, had 
they known of its existence. After a voyage of more than three thousand miles, during 
which they endured the most terrible sufferings, they landed at the Dutch settlement 
of Timor, and ultimately the survivors made their way back to England. 

But although Bligh could steer an open boat through almost unknown seas without 
a chart, he could not steer the little ship of state which was placed under his command 
when he received his commission as Governor of ' New South Wales ; but the fault was 
not so much in himself as in the circumstances which formed his environment. 

The recent publication of the " Brabourne Papers" reveals the fact that the offer of the 
Governorship of New South Wales was made to Captain Bligh by his warm personal 
friend. Sir Joseph Banks. The latter was consulted by His Majesty's Ministers, as 
indeed he was in every case in which Australian interests were concerned, and asked to 
suggest the name of a good man for the post. In his letter to Bligh he says: — "I 
was this day asked if I knew a man proper to be sent out in his (King's) stead ' one 
who has integrity unimpeached a mind capable of providing its own resources in diffi- 
culties without leening on others for advice firm in discipline civil in deportment and 
not subject to whimper and whine when severity of discipline is wanted to meet 
(emergencies). I immediately answered as this man must be chosen from among the 
post-captains I know of no one but Captain Bligh who will suit. ... I can there- 
fore if you chuse it place you in the government of the new colony with an income of 
;^200o a year and with the whole of the Government power and stores at your disposal." 

Bligh was a rough and ready sailor of the old school, without any idea of tact or 
conciliation, accustomed to absolute command and utterly impatient of contradiction ; but 
he is said to have been of a courteous nature, and of a kindly disposition to his 
inferiors. Perhaps, however, the memorable voyage of three thousand miles in the ship's 
launch had not sweetened his disposition. 

Bligh brought out with him stringent instructions for the suppression of the liquor 
trafific, and found himself immediately upon his arrival in New South Wales face to face 
with the bitter enmity of those to whom its existence was of vital importance. Regarding 
Captain Macarthur as the leading spirit in the public affairs of the colony, he appears 
to have openly manifested his dislike for that officer, and to have spoken very plainly 
to him on the subject of the large grant of land he had obtained at Camden ; and in 
a very short time the quarrel between them became serious. 

Here is a picture of the Governor drawn by his enemy, in the course of his 
evidence before the court-martial on Major Johnston : — " I went to the Government 
House ; this was about a month after he had taken the command. I found him 
walking in the garden, perfectly disengaged and alone ; and thinking it a proper 
opportunity to speak to him on the subject of my affairs, I inquired if he had been 
informed of the wishes of the Government respecting them. 1 particularly alluded to 
the sheep, and the probable advantage that might result to the colony and the mother- 
country from the production of fine wool. He burst out instantly into a most violent 
passion, exclaiming, ' What have I to do with your sheep, sir ? What have I to do 
with your cattle ? Are you to have such flocks of sheep and such herds of cattle as 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



7' 



no man ever heard of before? No, sir!' I endeavoured to appease him, by stating 
that I had understood the Government at Home had particularly recommended me to 
his notice. He repHed, 'I have heard of your concerns, sir; you have got five thousand 
acres of land in the finest situation in the country ; but, by God, you shan't keep 

it!' We immediately after entered the Government House, where we found 

Governor and Mrs. King, and sat down to breakfast. He then renewed the conversation 
about my sheep, address- 
ing himself to Governor 
King, when he used such 
violent and insulting lan- 
guage to him that Go- 
vernor King burst into 
tears." Of course, con- 
sidering how interested 
Macarthur was in this 
matter, the account may 
not be wholly unpreju- 
diced ; indeed, we are 
justified in regarding it as 
considerably over-coloured. 
The officers of the 
regiment naturally sym- 
pathized with Macarthur, 
and Bligh found himself 
standing alone, when mat- 
ters were brought to a 
crisis in consequence of 
Bligh's expressed deter- 
mination to cancel, on 

public grounds, certain grants of land which Macarthur and other ofificers had 
obtained from Governor King. At this time Macarthur owned a ves.sel named the 
Parramatta, from which a convict had made his escape, a fact which rendered 
the owner liable to the forfeiture of a bond for nine hundred sterling ; Bligh 
seized his opportunity, declared the bond forfeited, arrested Macarthur and put 
him in gaol. The officers of his regiment immediately took him out, and knowing 
that open war between themselves and the Governor would be the result, they 
determined to turn the tables on him at once. Major Johnston, the Commandant, 
was accordingly persuaded to place him under arrest, and to take the Government 
out of his hands until a new Governor should be sent out. On the 26th of 
January, 1808, the soldiers were marched to Government House, with band playing and 
colours flying. Bligh was captured in a bedroom while endeavouring to secrete some 
important documents which he was desirous of keeping from the hands of his captors. 
He was kept in arrest ; Major Johnston assumed the position of Lieutenant-Governor, 
which he filled until relieved by Lieutenant-Colonel Foveaux, who returned from 




BLIGH S BOAT ABANDONED BY THE " BOUNTY. 



72 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



England in July of the same year. In the early part of 1809 Colonel Paterson arrived 
from Van Diemen's Land and superseded F"oveaux ; Bligh having been in the meantime 
allowed to take command of the Porpoise, in which ship he sailed for Tasmania, where 
he remained until the arrival in Sydney of Governor Macquarie. 

Anticipating an enquiry, Johnston and Macarthur had already left for England, but 
it was not until May, 181 1, that Johnston was tried for the mutiny by court-martial, 
assembled at Chelsea Hospital, under the presidency of Lieutenant-General Keppel. An 
immense amount of evidence was taken, and a determined attempt made to fasten a 
charge of cowardice on Bligh by asserting that he tried to escape arrest by hiding 

under a bed. The shame of the attempt 
reflected only on the men who made it, Bligh 
successfully refuting the accusation. 

Here is an extract from the sturdy sailor's 
evidence, which could hardly issue from the lips 
of a coward: — "Just before I was arrested, on 
hearing of the approach of the regiment, I 
called for my uniform (which is not a dress 
adapted to concealment), and going into the 
room where the papers were kept I selected 
a few which I thought most important, either 
to retain for the protection of my character, or 
to prevent from falling into the hands of the 
insurgents. Among the latter were copies of 
my private and confidential communications to 
the Secretary of State on the conduct of 
several persons then in the colony. With these 
I retired upstairs, and having concealed some 
about ni)- person, I proceeded to tear the 
remainder. In the attitude of stooping for this 
purpose, with my papers aljout on the floor, I 
was discovered by the soldiers on the other 
side of the bed. As to the situation in which 
it is said I was found, I can prove by two 
witnesses that it was utterly impossible ; and I 
should have done so in the first instance had 
I not thought that Colonel Johnston was in- 
capable of degrading his defence by the admis- 
sion of a slander, which, if true, affords him no 
excuse, and if false, is highly disgraceful. 

" I know that Mr. Macarthur wrote the 

despatch in which this circumstance is mentioned 

with vulgar triumph ; but I could not anticipate that Colonel Johnston's address to 

the Court would be written in the same spirit ; and that after being the victim of Mr. 

Macarthur's intrigues he would allow himself to be made the tool of his revenge. 




BLAXLAND AND LAWSON S TREE. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE NEW SOUTH WALES. 



11 




THE OLD ROAD TO BATHURST, 
MOUNT VICTORIA. 



" It has been said that this circumstance would 
make the heroes of the British Navy blush with 
shame and burn witli indignation. I certainly at such 
a suggestion burn with indignation, but who ought 
to blush with shame I leave others to determine. 
" The Court will forgive me if I intrude a moment on 
their time to mention the services in which I have been 
employed. For twenty-one years I have been a Post- 
Captain, and have been engaged in services of danger not 
falling within the ordinary duties of my profession. For 
four years with Captain Cook in the Resolution, and four 
years more as a Commander myself, I traversed unknown 
seas, braving difficulties more terrible because less frequently 
encountered. In subordinate situations I fought under Admiral Parker at the Dogger 
Bank, and Lord Howe at Gibraltar. In the battle of Camperdown, the Director, under 
my command, first silenced and then boarded the ship of Admiral de Winter, and after 
the battle of Copenhagen, where I commanded the Glatton, I was sent for by Lord 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Nelson, to receive his thanks publicly on the quarter-deck. Was it for me, then, 
to sully my reputation and to disgrace the medal 1 wear by shrinking from death, 
which I had braveil in every shape ? An honourable mind will look for some 
other motive for my retirement, and will find it in my anxiety for those papers, 
which during this inquiry have been occasionally produced to the confusion of those 
witnesses who thought they no longer existed." 

The sentence of the Court, which was delivered on the 2nd of July, reads as 
follows : — " The Court having duly and maturely weighed and considered the whole of 
the evidence adduced on the prosecution, as well as that which has been offered in 
defence, are of opinion that Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston is guilty of the act of mutiny, 
as described in the charge, and do therefore sentence him to be cashiered." Macarthur, 
having left the Army some time before, was no longer amenable to military discipline, 
but the Home Government interdicted his return to the colony for a period of eio^ht 

> years. Bligh was made a 

Rear-Admiral of the lilue, 
and died in 181 7, nine 
years after the celebrated 
military mutiny at Sydney, 
and twenty-six years after 
that romantic episode in 
the histor)' of the Sea 
known as the " Mutiny of 
the Bounty" with which his 
name is inseparably linked. 

Governor Macquarie. 

Colonel Lachlan Mac- 
(juarie, who succeeded Cap- 
tain Bligh, arrived in Port 
Jackson on the last day 
of the year 1809, bring- 
ing with him a detach- 
ment of his regiment, the 
Seventy- third. He also 
brought a despatch from 
Lord Castlereagh, an- 
nouncing that Major John- 
ston was to be sent Home 
under arrest on a charge 
of mutiny ; that the New 
South Wales Corps was to be relieved by the Seventy-third ; and, as an expression of 
the opinion entertained by the Home Government of the recent transactions, that Bligh 
was to be re-instated as Governor for twenty-four hours by Macquarie, whom he was to 
recognize as his successor, and then proceed to England. But as Bligh was not in 




GOVERNOR LACHLAN MACQUARIE. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE NEW SOUTH WALES. 



75 



Sydney when Macqiiarie arrived, he could not be re-instated, so Macquarie began to 
administer the Government at once. Three days after his accession to office he issued a 
proclamation in which it was notified that all appointments made by Johnston, Foveaux and 
Paterson were null and void, and that all trials, grants and investigations held or made 
under their authority w^ere 
invalid. He set aside every- 
thing that had been done by 
the mutineers ; sent for Bligh, 
who was cruising off the 
Tasmanian coast ; received 
him with military honours on 
his return, and sent him to 
England in the following 
May. In a despatch to the 
Colonial Office, written in that 
month, Macquarie said of 
Bligh, that " he is a most 
unsatisfactory man to transact 
business with, from his want 
of candour and decision, inso- 
much that it is impossible 
to place the smallest reliance 
on the fulfillment of any 
engagement he enters into." 
At the same time, he said 
he had " not been able to 
discover any act of Bligh's 
which could in any degree 

form an excuse for the violent the argvle cut. 

and mutinous proceedings pursued against him." 

Macquarie had no sooner begun to administer the Government than he adopted a 
line of policy which soon brought him into conflict with all the free settlers in the 
colony. He had conceived the idea that the settlement was established for the benefit 
of the convict population, and that the first aim of the authorities should be to offer 
them every encouragement to reform and rise in the scale of society. The convict who 
had served his sentence, or had gained a pardon, was to be treated as if he had never 
been a convict at all ; he was to be received into the society of the free on equal 
terms, and rewarded with public appointments and other marks of honour. This policy 
naturally excited the indignation of the free settlers, whose minds were embittered by the 
knowledge that the head of the Government was always on the side of the convicts. 
In a despatch written when he had been scarcely four months in the colony, Macquarie 
expressed his surprise at "the extraordinary and illiberal policy" which had been adopted 
by previous Governors with regard to the Emancipists, adding: — "These persons have 
never been countenanced or received into society. I have, however, taken upon myself 




;6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

to adopt a new line of conduct." In 1813 he wrote to the Secretary of State that 
" free people should consider they are coming to a convict country, and if they are too 
proud or too delicate in their feelings to associate with the population of the country, 
they should consider it in time and bend their course to some other country." He 
added that " free settlers in general, who are sent out from England, are by tar the 
most discontented persons in the country-, and that emancipated convicts, or persons 
become free by servitude, made in many instances the best description of settlers." 
Macquarie's policy in this respect produced such unpleasant complications, that at last the 
Home Government was obliged to interfere. They sent out a Special Commissioner to 
conduct an inquiry into all matters connected with his Administration, and the result of 
the inquir)' led to his recall. 

Macquarie was pre-eminently the building Governor. He devoted a great deal of 
attention to the construction of roads and public buildings, on which convict labour was 
largely employed ; and many of the principal edifices erected in his time still remain — 
peculiar though useful monuments of his architectural taste. Many of our most important 
public institutions were established in his day, among them being the first Supreme 
Court, the Bank of New South Wales, and the Infirmary ; St. James's Church was 
erected, the foundations of St. Mary's Cathedral were laid, and the first wharf, called 
the King's Wharf, was constructed at the Circular Quay. 

Mrs. Macquarie contributed her share towards the adornment of Sydney, and her 
name has been perpetuated in connection with the beautiful reserve on which " Mrs. 
Macquarie's Chair" was cut in one of the rocks overlooking the Harbour, the winding 
carriage-road round the inside of the Domain which leads to this spot having been 
planned by her. She also planted Norfolk Island pines in the Botanical Gardens. 

But the great achievement of Macquarie's day was the discovery of a passage over 
the Blue Mountains. Governor Phillip, Captain Tench, Lieutenant Dawes and others 
had made repeated efforts to enlarge the area of settlement by crossing this formidable 
barrier, but all without success. Bass, surgeon of the Reliance, whose name is connected 
with some of the most daring exploits yet recorded in the annals of discovery, tried to 
force his way through the tangled scrub and rocky defiles, and after incredible labour 
succeeded in reaching the summit of a high spur, from which, however, he could see 
nothing beyond but a succession of still higher ranges, and he also retired from the 
struggle. Until 1813, these m.ountains had been regarded as impassable, all previous 
attempts to penetrate them having failed. 

The infant colony was thus deprived of all natural means of expansion, and the 
belief had almost become general that its resources were confined within the narrow 
limits of the county of Cumberland. But on the nth of May in the year 1813, when the 
land was suffering from a prolonged drought, and the stock was dying for want of 
fodder, an expedition formed by Gregory Blaxland, Lieutenant Lawson and William 
Charles Wentworth, with four servants, four horses and fiAe dogs, started from 
South Creek, near Penrith, with six weeks' provisions, for the purpose of exploring the 
countr)% They crossed the Nepean River at Emu Plains, and were soon on the ascent ; 
they were, however, forced to clear a track through the thick scrub, to clamber up and 
down the rocky gorges, and to find their way across the gloomy chasms and the 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



77 



densely-timbered gullies which make up the now famous scenery of the mountains. 
They had to cut grass wherever they could find it, and to carry it with them to feed 
their horses. On the 31st of May, when they had travelled fifty miles, finding them- 
selves in fine grass-land, they conceived that they 
had " sufificiently accomplished the design of their 
undertaking, and on the following day they bent 
their steps homewards." A tree was marked on 
the old Bathurst Road, at the heights of the 
mountains overlooking the Kanimbula Valley, and 
it still stands as a monument of a gallant enterprise. 
In the following November, Macquarie dis- 
patched George W. Evans, Deputy-Surveyor-General, 
with five men, to define the track which Wentworth 
and his companions had cut. He followed it to 





FORT MACQUARIE, SYDNEY COVE. 



the end, and continued his exploration for twenty-one days, passing beyond the 
ranges and on to the edge of the western plains. The country he discovered 
was described by him as " equal to every demand which this colony may have for 
extension of tillage and pasture lands for a century to come." Convicts were soon set 
to work at making a road across the mountains, which was completed and opened in 
April, 181 5. A site for a town, now known as Bathurst, was selected by Macquarie, 
who paid a visit of inspection to the new territory. The settlers were not long in 
availing themselves of the fresh pastures for their sheep and cattle ; fiocks and herds 
were sent to occup\- the grassy lands watered by the western rivers, and the colony 
entered on a new and still more prosperous era. 

Notwithstanding his errors of policy, Macquarie's Administration is entitled to take 
high rank in our history. It was distinguished by his energetic endeavours to promote 



-8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

the prosperity of the settlement, and the social as well as the material well-being of the 
people under his control. In all his efforts to attain these ends he was most ably 
seconded by his wife, who was generally distinguished by the title of "Lady" Macquarie, 
to which prefix, however, she had no claim other than that arising from a deeply-felt 
sense of public gratitude. Macquarie was recalled in the latter part of 1821, but remained 
in the colony for some months after vacating office in favour of his successor. 

Governor Brisbane. 

Sir Thomas Brisbane landed in Sydney in November, 1821, and on the ist of 
December following, the King's Commission appointing him Captain-General and Governor- 
in-Chief was read at an official gathering in Hyde Park. The retiring Governor, 
Macquarie, was present on the occasion, and read his farewell address to tlie inhabitants. 
In this valedictory speech he contrasted the state of the colony on his arrival with its 
flourishing condition at the time of his departure. His successor was a man of very 
different, and in some respects very much higher qualifications. At the time of his 
appointment he was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and being devoted to 
astronomv, he brought with him two assistants, and a collection of scientific books and 
instruments, and soon after his arrival he built an observatory at Parramatta, where he 
usually resided. The results of the observations conducted under his supervision during 
his term of office were published in 1835, and are still of great value. 

However, astronomy did not absorb the Governor's attention. Like most of his 
predecessors, he showed much interest in the work of exploration, and his efforts in that 
direction were attended with great success. In 1823 Surveyor-General Oxley was dis- 
patched to survey Port Curtis and Moreton Bay. The expedition resulted in the 
discovery of a river, which Oxley named the Brisbane, and in the formation on its banks 
of a convict settlement — which has since become known to the world as the capital of 
Queensland— also named after the Governor. In the following year Brisbane dispatched 
another expedition, this time to the south, under the command of Hamilton Hume, 
accompanied by a sailor named Hovell. The object in view was to ascertain whether 
any large rivers poured their waters into the sea on the eastern coast. Brisbane suggested 
that the exploring party should be landed at Western Port, and left to make their way 
overland to Sydney. Hume preferred taking his party from Lake George to Western 
Port, and back. The plan was agreed to, and the work was successfully accomplished in 
sixteen weeks, the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers being discovered on the way. 

Brisbane showed his sympathy with freedom of opinion by abolishing the rigid 
censorship of the Press, which had been maintained up to this time. On the 15th of 
October, 1824, the editor of the Sydttey Gazette which, till then, had been merely a 
medium for the publication of Government notices, was officially informed that the censor- 
ship would cease. Trial by jury, that is by non-military jurors, was introduced at the 
same time, mainly through the exertions of Chief Justice Forbes. The first civil jury 
empanelled in the colony sat in the Court of Quarter Sessions, on the 2nd of Novem- 
ber, 1824. The dawn of free institutions may be traced in an Act of the British 
Parliament passed in 1823, which virtually created a new Constitution for the colony. 
It greatly modified the old system, under which the Governor was an arbitrary ruler 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



79 



with no other check than that of the Colonial Office. A Legislative Council was created 
consisting of seven members, comprising the principal officials. Purely nominee as it was, 
this Council contained the germs of constitutional government in the colony. 

One of the most notable events of this period was the appearance in public life of 
William Charles Wentworth, the first native of the colony who distinguished himself as 




OLD GOVERNMENT HOUSE, 
PARRAMATTA. 



an orator and a statesman. 
He had been educated at 
Oxford, and called to the 

Bar in London. On his return to the colony in 1824, he was admitted to the Bar, and 
soon after became tlie champion of the popular party in the bitter struggles which, at 
that time and for many years afterwards, were carried on between the " Emancipists " 
and the " Exclusives." The first public question in which he was engaged was that of 
trial by jury. When civil juries were first empanelled in the Courts of Quarter 
Sessions, the Emancipists were held to be disqualified from serving as jurors ; an 
exclusion which naturally aroused their indignation. Wentworth led the agitation, not 
only in public meetings but in the columns of the Atistralian (a newspaper founded in 
1824), in favour of the admission of Emancipists to the ranks of jurors. This agitation 
was soon followed by another, for the purpose of extending the right of trial by jury 
to the Supreme Court ; that is to say, trial by jurors drawn from the ranks of 
Emancipists -as well as of free settlers, instead of the merely military juries then in 
existence. It was not till 1833 that these principles were fully established. 

A still more important question in which Wentworth was destined to find his 
greatest distinction occupied the minds of the colonists at this time. The colony had 
outgrown the system of arbitrary government under the rule of a Governor, and the 
popular party demanded those constitutional rights in the administration of their own 
affairs which, they said, were the birthright of Englishmen. They held frequent public 



So 



.-i USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




GOVERNOR BRISBANE. 



meetings on this subject, at which Wentworth was the principal and most enthusiastic 
speaker. Memorials were sent to the British Parliament in which the claims of the 
colonists to be represented in their own Legislature were forcibly urged. Taxation by 
representation being a fundamental doctrine of the Constitution, they dwelt upon the 

injustice to which they were subjected, in being taxed 
by a legislative body in which they had no voice. 
Their cause was advocated in the House of Commons 
by Sir James Macintosh, Charles Duller, and other cele- 
brated Members of Parliament. 

Another distinguished man also entered upon his 
public career during Brisbane's Administration. John 
Dunmore Lang, a young Presbyterian minister, who 
having been ordained in 1822 came to the colony in 
the following year. I-^or many years his energies were 
mainly devoted to the furtherance of religious and 
educational interests ; but his active and comprehensive 
mind naturally led him to take a prominent part in 
the various public questions of the day. As a 
speaker at public meetings, and as a writer in the Press, he was not less 
enthusiastic than Wentworth in his advocacy of popular rights. He published many 
volumes on various subjects connected with the colony, in particular a " Historical and 
Statistical Account of New South Wales" printed in 1834, which, after going through 
several editions, still remains a standard work of reference. 

Sir Thomas Brisbane was the colony's sixth Governor, and his Administration lasted 
four years, at the end of which period Sir Ralph Darling was appointed to succeed him. 
Sir Thomas left Sydney for England in December, 1825, and the Government, pending 
Darling's arrival, was administered for about a fortnight 
by Colonel Stewart of the Third Regiment or " Buffs." 

Governor Darling. 

It was unfortunate for himself, as well as for the 
colony, that General Darling's ideas of government, like 
those of his immediate predecessors, were strongly 
coloured by his military associations. If Phillip and the 
naval men who succeeded him. Hunter, King and Bligh, 
ruled the colony as they had been accustomed to rule a 
ship from the quarter-deck, the military men who followed 
them, from Macquarie onwards, were not less distinguished 
by their love of absolute command. Darling was a strict 
disciplinarian in every sense of the word ; and not 
being disposed to encourage the growth of an inde- 
pendent or popular party in the little community of which he was the head, he soon 
became involved in fiery squabbles with its leaders. From his stand-point, no doubt, 
they were no better than rebels or mutineers ; while in their eyes he was simply a tyrant. 




governor darling. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE NEW SOUTH WALES. 



8i 



The chiefs of the 
popular party made 
fierce and violent 
attacks upon the new 
Governor in their 
newspapers (of which 
t h e >' had f o u r ) ; 
while, in return. 
Darling prosecuted 
the editors and pub- 
lishers for seditious 
libel ; and, not con- 
tent with the heavy 
penalties imposed 
upon them, he passed 
a Bill through his 
Legislative Council, 
making a second 
conviction for libel 
punishable with ban- 
ishment from New 
South Wales. This 
provision was aimed 
at Wentworth and 
his friends, but the 
Home Government 
thought it a little 
too severe, and Dar- 
ling was obliged to 
repeal it. His no- 
tions as to the 
liberty of the Press 
may be judged from 
the fact that the 
publisher of the 
Australian news- 
paper was fined one 
hundred pounds and 
imprisoned for six 
months for saying 
that, in a certain 
case which then ex- 
cited great public interest, the Governor had substituted his will for the law. Yet not- 
withstanding the bitter feud between Sir Ralph Darling and the Kmancipist party, their 




BUSHRANGERS CAVE, MOUNT VICTORIA. 



82 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

efforts to secure admission to the jury' lists met with some success during his Adminis- 
tration. Convicts who had served their term of transportation were declared eligible as 
jurors, but on a second conviction in the colony they were to be disqualified. A further 
advance towards constitutional government was made in the new Constitution Act, passed 
by the Imperial Parliament in 1828, by which the Legislative Council was enlarged to 
fifteen members. The Bushranging Act, one of the most remarkable measures known in 
the colony, was passed by this Council, in 1830, at a single sitting. That species of 
highway robbery known as " bushranging," which had become prevalent many years 
before, had reached such a height at this time as to cause a general feeling of alarm. 
Sometimes the escaped convicts who took to the bush formed large gangs, and attacked 
the police as well as the settlers. On one occasion a pitched battle was fought at 
Campbell's River, in the Bathurst District, between a party of bushrangers, over fifty in 
number, and a large gathering of settlers ; but neither side was victorious. The police 
were next attacked, and some of them killed. Re-inforcements were then sent from Goul- 
burn, and having come upon the bushrangers at the Lachlan River, another engagement 
took place, but without much result. The whole gang, however, soon after surrendered 
to a detachment of the Thirty-ninth Regiment sent from Sydney, and ten of them were 
hanged at Bathurst. To suppress such outrages as these, the Act provided that all 
suspected persons might be apprehended without a warrant ; that any one carrying arms 
might be arrested, and any one suspected of having them might be searched ; that 
general warrants to search houses might be granted, armed with which the police should 
be empowered to break and enter any house by daj- or by night, seize fire-arms found 
therein, and arrest the inmates. Robbers and house-breakers were to suffer death on the 
third day after conviction. The effect of this Act in suppressing crime and restoring 
order was described as magical. But the alarm caused by the bushrangers must have 
been great indeed to justify such an extension of the powers entrusted to the police. 

Considerable progress in the noble work of discovery was made during Darling's 
Administration. Allan Cunningham, a celebrated botanist, was dispatched in 1827 on an 
inland expedition to the north. Starting from the head of the Hunter River, he traversed 
the affluents of the Namoi and the Gwydir, and discovered the Darling Downs. Two 
years later he set out on a second expedition from Moreton Bay, whither he had 
gone by sea; explored the sources of the Brisbane River, took up the tracks of his 
former journey, and gave the name of Cunningham's Gap to an opening by which the 
Darling Downs could be reached through the Liverpool Ranges. Cunningham will ever 
be gratefully remembered by the people of Sydney as one of the many learned and 
tasteful men who have from time to time watched over the arrangement and cultiva- 
tion of the beautiful reserve known as the Botanical Gardens. Indeed one of the loveliest 
vistas in this singularly lovely domain is to be obtained from the margin of the small 
lagoon from the centre of which, embowered in the drooping fronds of some species of 
palm, rises the obelisk which commemorates the name and fame of the intrepid scientist. 

Another distinguished explorer was commissioned by Darling, in 1828, to make 
researches in the interior. This was Captain Charles Sturt, of the Thirty-ninth Regiment, 
Hamilton Hume being associated with him. They struck out towards the region which 
had bafifled Oxley, discovered the Darling River, thence turned north, and after some 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



83 






months of labour found that the Macquarie and Castlereagh Rivers, with the Namoi 
and the Gvvydir, were tributaries of that artery of the west which he named the Darhng. 

Sturt was sent out on another expedition in the following year — this time to the 
south. He was accompanied by George, the son of Alexander Macleay, who had arrived 
in the colony as Colonial Secretary 
soon after Darling. Sturt made for 
the Murrumbidgee River, which he 
descended in a small boat, passed 
its junction with the Hume, which . 
he named the Murray — not know- 
ing that it had been named the 
Hume by its discoverer — and then 
traced the united waters of the 
Murrumbidgee, Murray and Dar- 
ling till they fell into Lake 
Alexandrina, and eventually into 
the sea in Encounter Bay. 

The designs of the French 
to form settlements in Australia 
and \ an Diemen's Land were so 
strongly suspected by the British 
Government, that repeated instruc- 
tions were sent out • to the 
Governors of New South Wales 
to keep watch and ward along 
their shores. The alarm was kept 
up for many years i^y the ap- 
pearance of French ships off the 
coast, nominally equipped for pur- 
poses of discovery or scientific research ; but in reality, as it was then believed, to 
take possession of any unoccupied territory they could find. In Darling's time, for 
instance, a French corvette, the Astrolabe, sailed into Port Jackson, and her Commander, 
in reply to enquiries made by His Excellency, informed him that the expedition was 
a purely scientific one. But Darling, in his despatches to the Home Government, 
wrote that it was perhaps fortunate that three men-o'-war were then anchored in the 
Harbour, and that another had just sailed for Western Port ; facts which, he said, 
might make the Frenchman a little " more circumspect in his proceedings than he other- 
wise would have beer." 

To prevent the French from occupying the territory. Darling sent out two expedi- 
tions in 1826 — one to Western Port, and the other to King George's Sound. In the 
event of the officers in charge finding the French already in occupation at either of 
those places, they were thus instructed : — " You will, notwithstanding, land the troops, 
and signify to tho Frenchmen that their continuance with any view to establishing 
themselves, or colonization, would be considered an unjustifiable intrusion on His 




UOVERNOR BOURKE S STATUE. 



84 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Britannic Majesty's possessions." The settlements were formed accordingly ; but the 
reports made by the officers in charge were so unfavourable that, in 1828, Western 
Port was abandoned. A site for the intended settlement at King George's Sound was 
fixed at a place called Albany, but it made no progress so far as colonizing was 
concerned. It was, however, maintained as a military post until 1830, when it was 
transferred from the Government of New South Wales to that of Western Australia. 

A third settlement was formed at Swan River for the same purpose as the others. 
Captain Stirling was sent to survey it in 1827, and was subsequently appointed Governor 
of the settlement, established there two years afterwards by certain speculators with the 
approval of the British Government. The scheme, unfortunately, proved a total failure, 
the land policy upon which it was based being unsuitable. 

Governor Darling left Sydney on the 22nd of October, 1831, and from that date 
until the 2nd of December of the same year the duties of Acting-Governor were 
administered by Colonel Lindsay of the Thirty-ninth Regiment. Although Darling had 
been much troubled with political agitators on the one hand, and bushrangers on the 
other, he was still able to glve^ a good account of his five years' Administration, the 
colony having made substantial progress during the period. When he left the colony the 
population had increased to over fifty-one thousand, and the export of wool had reached a 
million and a half pounds in weight, the total exports amounting to half-a-million sterling. 



Governor Bourke. 

Major-General Sir Richard Bourke, K.C.B., arrived in Sydney on the 2nd of 
December, 1831, and the clouds of unpopularity which closed round Darling's Adminis- 
tration served only to make his fortunate successor popular almost before he landed. 
Bourke was received with every demonstration of welcome, and an address presented 

to him by the free inhabitants stated that " after 
nearly six years of public endurance, arising partly from 
the visitations of Providence, but more from an inveterate 
system of misgovernment," they hailed His Excellency's 
arrival " as the dawn of a happier era." So indeed it 
proved ; for the six years during which Bourke adminis- 
tered the affairs of the colony were not only free from 
class warfare, but were distinguished by the rapid growth 
of industr)- and commerce, and the steady development 
of national life under new forms. In fact, the history of 
the colony as a free State, so to speak, may be said to 
date from Bourke's time. It was then that the hopes 
and aspirations of the popular party for the constitutional 
rights of free men first began to be truly realized, 
although in a ver)' modified form. Trial by jury in the Superior Courts — that is, by 
civilian instead of by military jurors — was granted in an optional form in 1833; and 
although representative government was still withheld by the Home authorities, the 
administration of public affairs was conducted by Bourke on constitutional principles, 
nth very little resort to the arbitrary power which had made his predecessor's rule 




GOVERNOR SIR RICHARD BOURKE. 



I 



k 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



85 



distasteful to the whole community. Bourkc did not allow his military training or 
career to petrify his ideas of government. Being essentially liberal and high-minded, with 
too much tact to make personal enemies, or to suffer himself to be embroiled in petty 

squabbles, although at the same 
time not wanting in firmness, he 
generally succeeded in having his 
own way. As soon as practicable 
after his arrival he paid a series of 
visits of inspection to the different 
out-lying settlements, for the purpose 
of acquainting himself personally 
with their present condition and 
future prospects, and thereby ob- 
tained an extent of popularity which 
none of his predecessors had enjoyed. 
Some proof of his sense of justice 
and moderation of temper will be 
found in the fact that no Govern- 
ment prosecutions for libel took 
place during his term of office. 
Many valuable reforms were carried 
out by him both in Government 
and in Administration ; the convict 
system was amended by providing 
for a more equitable distribution of 
assigned servants among the settlers, 
and at the same time regulating 
the amount of punishment by the 
lash to which convicts were subjected 
at the will of their masters ; the 
system of Government aid to the 
churches of different denominations 
was improved by establishing reli- 
gious equality among the sects — a 
policy by which it was hoped, in 
the language of Bourke, that " the 
people of those persuasions will be united together in one bond of peace, and taught 
to look up to the Government as their common protector and friend;" the immigration 
of free settlers was promoted by the joint action of the Home and Colonial Governments; 
arid he endeavoured, though vainly, to establish a system of national education. 

The estimates laid before the Legislative Council shortly after Bourke's arrival, con- 
tained the first vote in aid of immigration — the Home Government having expressed its 
intention to contribute double the amount voted by the colony. The first immigrant ship 
had entered the Harbour, only a few months before, bringing fifty young women from an 




WEXTWORTH S STATUE IN THE SYDNEY UNIVERSITY. 



86 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

orphan school in Cork. The second ship had on board fifty-nine mechanics (principally 
stone-masons and carpenters), who came out under arrangements with the Rev. Dr. Lang, 
for the purpose of building the Australian College which had been projected by him. 

The progress of exploration during this period is distinguished by the expeditions 
conducted by Major (afterwards Sir Thomas) Mitchell, the Surveyor-General who had 
succeeded Oxley. The first was directed to the north, to the Liverpool Plains ; the 
second to e.xplore the countr)' between the Bogan and the Macquarie ; the third had for 
its object a survey of the Darling ; and the fourth was to the west and south-west, and 
resulted in the discovery of Australia Felix. Settlement on the eastern shores of New 
South Wales kept pace with the development of the interior. Timber-getters in search 
of cedar established themselves on the banks of the Clarence, and subsequently occu- 
pied the Bellinger, Tweed and Richmond Rivers. 

In 1836 Sir Richard Bourke prevailed upon the Home Government to waive its 
objections to the proclamation of a new settlement at Port Phillip, and he sent Captain 
Lonsdale, of the Fourth Regiment, in H.M.S. Rattlesnake commanded by Captain 
Hobson, to take charge of it. In March of the following year, Bourke himself visited 
the new settlement, gave the name of Melbourne to the township, and laid out several of 
the streets. In his despatch to the Secretary of State, he said : — " I found on my arrival, 
on the spot selected for a settlement by Mr. Batman on the banks of the Yarra River, 
at the head of the inland sea called Port Phillip, an assembled population consisting of 
from sixt)- to seventy families. The situation appearing to be well chosen, I directed a 
town to be immediately laid out, which your lordship will perceive by the map has 
received the name of Melbourne." 

Among the numerous progressive public measures passed during Bourke's tenure of 
office was a Bill admitting the Emancipists to serve on civil and criminal juries, and 
the abolition of free grants of land. The sites of the present Government House and 

the gaol at Darlinghurst were chosen by Committees 
appointed for the purpose, and the erection of these 
buildings recommended. The proposal to form a semi- 
circular wharf from shore to shore at the head of the 
inlet, named by Phillip Sydney Cove, was also approved. 

That the popularity which Bourke obtained on his 
arrival was not lessened by his public career in the 
colony, is- amply proved by the bronze statue which stands 
at the entrance to the Domain. It still forms one of 
the most conspicuous monuments in Sydney, and was 
erected in his honour by the private subscription of the 
people. He resigned his post and returned to England 
GOVERNOR .SIR GEORGE GIPPS. '" December, 1837, and the Government of the colony 

passed temporarily into the hands of Lieutenant-Colonel 
Kenneth Snodgrass, C.B., pending the arrival of Bourke's successor. 

In the year 1838 the French again appeared off the coasts, two ships — the Astrolabe 
and Zelie — turning up at Raffles Bay, soon after an English expedition, under Sir Gordon 
Bremer, had fixed upon the site of a settlement at Port Essington. In his narrative of 




HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



87 



the event, Captain Stokes says that " the officers of the two nations seemed to vie with 
each other in courtesy, but the question whether Foreign Powers were entitled to take 
possession of points on the coast of Australia was much debated at the time, and it 
was popularly believed that the French had entertained some intentions of forestalling 
our settlement." Shortly after this event they nearly succeeded through the intrigues 
of Baron de Thierry in taking possession of New Zealand. 




Governor Gipps. 

The history of the colony during the Administration of Sir George Gipps, a Captain 
in the Royal Engineers, who arrived in F"ebruary, 1838, assumes proportions altogether 
unknown to it under 
the rule of his prede- 
cessors. It is no longer 
occupied with the melan- 
choly records of the 
convict class, or the 
bitter feuds between the 
Emancipists and the 
Exclusives. The state 
of society had changed ; 
free immigration had 
begun to flow in ; capi- 
tal was introduced b\- ini. u.^u. llL",.l, i.v\ l:. :,:_;_> ; U'L-:.. 
settlers from abroad antl 

invested in sheep and cattle stations ; the system of assigned' servants ceased in 1838, 
and transportation itself, which had been yearly growing more unpopular, was abolished by 
an Order in Council two years later, although it was not finally extinguished until 1851. 

The most remarkable event of this period was the establishment of a new Consti- 
tution, under an Act passed by the Imperial Parliament in 1842. Representative insti 
tutions were at length conceded to the colony, although responsible government was 
still withheld. The new Legislative Council was composed of thirty-six members, of 
whom twenty-four were elected and twelve appointed by the Crown. The Port Phillip 
District returned five members, of whom Melbourne had one. Property qualifications were 
required in the case of electors as well as elected, and the political rights for which 
the Emancipists had struggled so long were at last conferred upon them. The first 
writs for the ejection of members were issued in 1843; and the new Council met on 
the 1st of August in that year. Among its most prominent members were Wentworth 
and Dr. Bland, who sat for Sydney ; Dr. Lang, who represented a constituency in Port 
Phillip ; Richard Windeyer and William Foster, both members of the Bar ; Charles 
Cowper, Terence Aubrey Murray, Major D'Arcy Wentworth, the statesman's brother ; 
Roger Therry, then Attorney-General ; and Alexander Macleay, the former Colonial 
Secretary, who was elected Speaker. Among the members appointed by the Crown were 
E. Deas-Thompson, the Colonial Secretary; John Hubert Plunkett, after\vards Attorney- 
General ; and Robert Lowe, afterwards known as Lord Sherbrooke, a successful barrister 



88 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

who took his seat in November of the same year. It is a very singular fact that a 
legislative body composed of so many able men should have been called into existence 
in a colony where, but a few years before, public questions were almost wholly confined 
to matters in dispute between the free settlers and the Emancipists. 

Among the first questions with which the new Council was called upon to deal, the 
most important related to the extreme distress which existed more or less among all 
classes. From 1840 to 1846, the colony was plunged in a state of depression which 
brought the shadow of ruin to every man's door. This was to some extent the result 
of a re-action from the inflated state of prosperity which had existed a few years before, 
when prices of land and stock rose to a fictitious value, and speculation in land 
absorbed all the floating capital in the country. Among the immediate causes of depres- 
sion were the cessation of Imperial expenditure on transportation, and the withdrawal of 
Government deposits from the banks ; the consequent pressure brought to bear by those 
institutions on their customers ; the substitution of free labour for that of the assigned 
servants, necessitating cash payment of wages ; the locking up of capital in large 
purchases of land, which up to that time had been sold at five and subsequently twelve 
shillings an acre ; and indulgence in excessive speculation, by which the ordinary indus- 
tries of the country were deprived of capital. The result was that every branch of trade 
and industry fell into a state of utter collapse ; property became unsaleable ; sheep 
(ordinary ewes) that had been purchased shortly before at two guineas each, were 
hardly disposable at five or six shillings ; money had almost disappeared from circulation ; 
and finally, as if to intensify the crisis, the Bank of Australia closed its doors with 
liabilities amounting to a quarter of a million. 

One of the first remedies for this state of things proposed in the Council was a 
"Monetary Confidence" Bill, passed in the session of 1844 on the motion of Mr. 
Richard Windeyer. The Bill proposed to " avert ruin " by pledging the public credit, 
but Gipps withheld the Royal Assent, and the project was therefore never carried out. 
During the debate an amendment was moved by Mr. Charles Cowper, in which, after 
declaring that " the miseries of the time were increasing with frightful rapidity, and 
were likely to involve in ruin the whole community," it was suggested that the Govern- 
ment should relieve the strain by issuing exchequer bills. That proposal, however, was 
rejected. Another desperate remedy, in the shape of a Lottery Bill, was submitted with 
more success by Mr. Wentworth, who had now become the most conspicuous figure in 
the country. The failure of the Bank of Australia, established on the principle of 
unlimited liability, had not only rendered it necessary for the bank to realise its assets 
— comprising a great deal of landed property — but the share-holders had become involved 
in its fall. It was contended that if they were subjected to levy and distress, the 
immediate result would be "a panic which would annihilate the value of property." The 
Bill empowered the proprietors of the bank to dispose of its assets by lottery ; its 
author justifying the scheme on the ground that a lottery was " the only adequate 
remedy for a great public danger, which threatens nothing less than the disorganization 
of society by the confiscation of tliat property for whose protection it mainly exists." 
The Bill passed, three members only opposing it ; but it was disallowed by the Home 
Government. However, the pressure was so intense that the terrors of the law were 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



89 



felt to be insignificant and scarcely worthy consideration when compared with the more 
tangible terrors of unlimited liability. The lottery tickets were therefore disposed of, and 
the scheme successfully completed before the law could be set in motion against it. 

The practical genius of Wentworth did not exhaust itself in the framing of a 
Lottery Bill. Among other measures he introduced and carried a Bill to legalise liens 




GOVERNMENT HOUSE, SYDNEY. 

on wool and mortgages of stock, which 
ultimately became law — although dis- 
allowed in the first instance by the 
Home Government as, to quote Lord Stanley's despatch, " irreconcilably opposed to 
the principles of legislation immemorially recognized in this country respecting the 
alienation or pledging of things movable." It was not only the means of affording 
relief to the settlers at that time, but it has since proved to be one of the most 
practically useful measures known to colonial law. The idea was taken from the practice 
of the sugar-planters in the West Indies, among whom it had long been customary to 
mortgage not only their sugar crops, but the negroes who cultivated them. 

A more practical remedy than legislation, however, was needed to revive the flagging 
industries of the colony, particularly on the sheep and cattle stations. A settler at 
Yass, named Henry O'Brien, hit upon a happy idea which did more to restore prosperity 
than anything that mere legislation could effect. As Wentworth had taken a hint from 
the West Indies, so O'Brien availed himself of a knowledge of the practice in Russia, 
where surplus stock was boiled down for fat, and the trade in tallow was large and 
profitable. Boiling-down began at Yass in January, 1843, and the results showed that 
at least six shillings a head might be obtained for ordinary sheep. The effect was 
magical. Sheep and cattle at once rose in value ; boiling-down became universal 



90 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

throughout the pastoral districts, and the unfortunate stock-owners were saved at the 
last moment from absolute ruin. A new trade was thus established with Europe, and 
the export of tallow, hides and skins, which originated in the collapse of local business 
operations, began to take rank among the permanent sources of colonial wealth. Following 
immediately on the introduction of the boiling-down industry came also that of meat- 
preserving, which was begun on a small scale by Mr. Sizar Elliott, and has since 
developed into an important and lucrative business. 

Politics at this time gave rise to a bitter struggle. Certain Crown Lands Regulations 
which Sir George Gipps had framed and issued in 1844, provoked determined opposition 
on the part of the squatters, whose views were advocated by W'entworth and Lowe. 
Their opposition did not confine itself to the Council, but was carried on in the Press 
with a degree of aiiiniiis which must have told severely on the Governor. His proposal 
to tax the holders of Crown lands was denounced as tyranny, the argument being — as 
stated by Wentworth — that " the right claimed by the Government of imposing arbitrary 
and unlimited imposts for the occupation of Crown lands affected the vital interests of 
the whole community, and rendered the right of imposing taxes by the representatives 
of the people almost nugatory." To that argument Gipps replied that " to take a pay- 
ment for the use of Crown lands is not to impose a tax." The constitutional question 
thus raised by Wentworth attracted universal attention, and the Governor found himself 
engaged in a struggle with the whole community. . His license fees for the occupation 
of Crown lands were compared with the ship-money which King Charles attempted to 
levy and which Hampden resisted ; and the contest itself was termed a question between 
prerogative and the liberty of the people. The ultimate result was that the Council 
refused to renew the Land Act framed by Gipps, which had been passed for one )ear 
only, and the Governor's land policy was at an end. Sir George Gipps closed his career 
in New South Wales in July, 1846, and died in England the following February. The 
present Government House was built during his Administration, and was first occupied 
in May, 1843. Sir Maurice O'Connell, Commander of the military forces, administered 
the Government of the colony for a few weeks after Sir George Gipps had sailed. 

-Sir Charles Augu.stus Fitzrov. 

Sir Charles Fitzroy arrived in Sydney at a time when the colony had entered on 
an era of prosperity hitherto unknown in its histor\-. He was the first of our Governors 
who had enjoyed the advantage of previous experience in a like capacit\-, having held 
office in Prince Edward's Island, and also in Antigua. That experience, no doubt, largely 
contributed to the success of his Administration ; and his tact, good temper, and 
moderation, combined with his knowledge of constitutional government, enabled him to 
avoid collision with, contending parties. In the first speech he addressed to the Legisla- 
tive Council on its meeting in .September, 1846, a month after his arrival, he 
congratulated its members on the general prosperity- of the country — a prgsperity the 
more remarkable, inasmuch as the colony was " onl\- just emerging from those difficulties 
which were experienced under that monetary depression which afTected all classes of the 
community." Among the many striking evidences of the new life which had been infused 
into the colony at this time, mainly as a result of free immigration and the rapid 




THE VALLEY UK THE CiKU.SE. 




HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 91 

extension of settlement in the interior, the most conspicuous were the movements set on foot 
for the construction of railways and the establishment of steam communication with England. 

The gradual increase in the tide of immigration had greatly contributed to promote 
the prosperity of the people, and check existing abuses. It did not begin to How in 
any sensible volume until the attention of the British 
public had been drawn to the colony by the ofificial 
report prepared by Mr. Bigge, the Special Commissioner 
sent out to report on Governor Macquarie's Administra- 
tion. The publication of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's 
celebrated " Letter from Sydney," in 1829, materially 
aided in directing the attention of statesman interested 
in the work of colonization to the true principles on 
which immigration should be carried out. The progress 
of settlement in the colony took the Home and Colonial 
Governments completely by surprise. Flocks and herds 
were driven further and further inland as each new 

discovery made the resources of the interior known ; but governor sir charles fitzroy. 
stock-owners and settlers were met with the ever-increasintr 

difficulty of finding a sufficient supph' of labour. Convict labour was nominally cheap, but 
really dear at any price ; and the growing repugnance felt towards it as an element of 
home life, created a corresponding demand for the free immigrant. A system of free immi- 
gration therefore became one of the great social questions of the time. Free grants of land 
had been offered by the British Government in the early da)s ; but very few immigrants 
were attracted in this way. Then came the bounty system, under which so much a 
head was paid for every immigrant ; but that fell into disrepute, owing principally to 
the starvation allowance and bad accommodation on board the passenger ships. Then it 
gradually became recognized as a principle of State policy, mainly owing to Wakefield's 
teaching, that the revenue arising from the land should be appropriated to the purpose of 
promoting immigration. Under that system money was remitted by the Colonial Govern- 
ment every year to be expended by a Board of Emigration Commissioners appointed in 
London, who selected and despatched the best emigrants they could get. But .■\mencan 
competition was keenly felt in the labour market, and the Government had to tempt 
people to emigrate to Australia by paying half the passage money and offering small 
loans to mechanics, who could be induced to leave England on no other terms. 

The demand for laljour became so great that in 1836 a Committee of the Council 
reported in favour of a project to import coolies from India. But the coolie proposals 
did not meet the necessity of the case, which in 1838 became still more serious, owing 
to the cessation of the assignment system in that year. Select Committees of the Council 
met year after year to consider the subject and devise remedies for the growing malady 
of the State. When the land sales were large, both money and immigrants became 
plentiful ; but when the sales declined, as they did in times of depression, there was 
no money and no immigration. The Coiuicil then recommended that a loan should be 
negotiated in England. Sir George Gipps preferred economy to borrowing, and spoke 
his mind out freely to the Council. The colony was thus compelled to struggle with 



92 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

its difficulties as best it could, the head of the State insisting on rigid economy as the 
only sound policy, and resolutely scouting the idea of a loan ; although the distress 
arising from want of labour was described as ." almost incredible." The state of affairs 
in the colony for the long period of stagnation from 1841 to 1846 may be seen in the 
fact that during its continuance immigration was almost entirely stopped. In 1847 it 
began to revive, and in 1851 the wonderful gold-discovery took place, which was followed 
by a mighty rush of population from every quarter of the globe. And thus the great 
immigration question, which for so many years had defied the efforts of legislators and 
statesmen, was practically settled by a gold-digger. 

Among the many remarkable events which contributed to render the Administration 
of Sir Charles Fitzroy conspicuous was the establishment of the Sydney University. 
Although the project had been brought before the Council by Wentworth in 1849, '^ 
was not until October, 1853, that the institution itself was formally inaugurated. The 
Committee expressed itself strongly in favour of the proposal, but at the same time 
insisted on the necessity of making it " a truly national institution — one to which all 
classes and denominations might resort for secular education." The report was adopted 
by the Council, and an Act to incorporate the University was shortly afterwards passed. 
The services rendered by Wentworth, on this and other occasions, were appropriately 
recognized by his fellow-countrymen when his statue was erected within the walls of the 
noble institution he had founded. 

A measure of still greater importance, in the shape of a new Constitution based on 
the principles of representative government, occupied the attention of this distinguished 
statesman during the same period. Engaged as he had been for so many years in the 
long and painful struggle for self-government, it naturally fell to his lot to complete the 
structure he had so earnestly endeavoured to erect. The Home authorities had no 
doubt acted with greater wisdom than colonial patriots were then prepared to admit, 

when they determined to extend the principle of repre- 
sentation slowly and gradually, instead of granting it in 
full measure at a time when the colony was not ripe 
for it. The gradual extension of the self-governing 
power from time to time undoubtedly did much to pre- 
pare the colonists for the healthier and more active 
political life which the establishment of responsible 
government brought with it. 

The conduct of public affairs by the Council, in 
which Wentworth was the principal figure, had been so 
distinguished for statesman-like ability that the capacity 
,-„..::.,p^„^r,,- qJ- jj^g colonists for self-government could no longer be 

SIR WILLIAM DENISON. denied. But a still more potent influence had been at work. 

The great gold-discoveries, which took place in 1849, ^^^^, 
in Wentworth's phrase, precipitated the colony into a nation, and the demand for free 
institutions came upon the Home Government with a degree of force it was impossible 
to resist. When, therefore, the popular advocate of self-government obtained a Committee 
in 1852 to prepare a new Constitution for the colony, in pursuance of the powers 




HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



93 




FORT UE.MSOX 



conferred on the Council by the Imperial Parliament, it was felt that the time had at 
last arrived when the life-long struggle of the patriot would be crowned with success. 
The second reading of the Bill was moved by him in the session of the following year, 
and was carried by a majority of thirty-four to eight. It was strongly opposed by a 
considerable section of the public on the ground that the Members of the Upper House 
should be elected, instead of 
being nominated by the Crown. 
But the nominee principle 
was considered essential by 
the framers of the Bill, for 
the purpose of reproducing 
the Constitution of the British 
Parliament as closely as possi- 
ble ; and in deference to those 
views, the Bill was passed as 
it stood. In order to assist its progress through 

the Imperial Parliament, Wentworth was commissioned by the Council to proceed to 
England with the Colonial Secretary, E. Deas-Thomson, who had greatly distinguished him- 
self by his successful conduct of public business for many years. The Bill, which was 
passed in due course, was received in the colony in October, 1855. The old Legislative 
Council was finally dissolved on the 19th of December following, and the new Con- 
stitution was formally inaugurated by the Governor-General, Sir William Denison, who 
had succeeded Sir Charles Fitzroy in the beginning of the year. 

The New Constitution. 

The establishment of responsible government brought about so great a change in the 
political system of the colony that from that date the current of its history may be 
said to run in a totally different channel. Other actors come upon the .scene. The 
martial figure of the Governor disappears, his place being occupied by men henceforth 
known as the responsible Ministers of the Crown. The old system of arbitrary rule, 
resting on military force, is superseded by a form of government in which the elected 
representatives of the people control the destinies of the country. Under the former, 
the history of the colony was simply the biography of the Governor ; under the latter, 
he becomes known as the representative of Majesty. From a mere handful of turbulent 
and dissatisfied colonists always clamouring for political rights, and too often picking 
quarrels with the Governor of the day in order to assert their claim to independence, 
the people of New South Wales had suddenly begun to display the athletic forms and 
proportions of national life. For more than half a century their progress had been a 
slow and generally a painful one, although their destiny had been written in unmistak- 
able lines by the hand of Nature, even at the foundation of the settlement. No 
community ever struggled more manfully against the difficulties with which they were 
surrounded from the outset of their history ; none ever fought more hopefully against 
the long succession of disasters and reverses which met them on all sides in their 
efforts to cultivate the wilderness. The great gold-discovery of 1851 might be said to 



94 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

have come just at the right time to complete the work of individual enterprise in 
developing the vast resources of the country. Had it come earlier it would certainly 
have disorganized, and might possibly have wrecked, the community in a chaos of wild 
disorder, in which the most dangerous classes would have found free play for their 
vicious instincts. Coming as it did, and when it did, it was almost an unmixed good 
fortune. By attracting population from every quarter, it settled the great question 
connected with the supply of labour, brought the world's commerce to the shores of 
Port Jackson, and gave a fresh impulse to every form of industrial occupation. 

The Administration of Sir Charles Fitzroy marks the transition period from the 
old form of government to the new. The colony in its inception was simply an 
unwalled prison, in which a few free men were permitted to reside, and so rigid was the 
exclusion that even a clergyman was re-shipped because he arrived without authority. 
By a kind of natural instinct, naval officers -were chosen as the earliest Governors, being 
accustomed to command, and to insist upon obedience. But in the nature of the case the 
colonial prison tended to become a society, and the arbitrariness of the Governor became 
inconsistent with the enjoyment of those personal and political rights which Englishmen 
had been taught so dearly to cherish. With the exception of Captain Phillip, the naval 
ofificers were not skilled in adapting themselves to the situation, and the mutiny in the time 
of Governor Bligh convinced the Home Government that some change was necessary. 

A new principle of selection was therefore established, and military men took the 
place of the sea-captains of former days. Colonel Macquarie was sent out with a view 
to establish a different system of Administration, and from that time to the departure 
of Sir George Gipps, the colony was governed on principles considerably .more enlightened 
than those which had previously obtained, though the personal authority of the Governor 
remained unaltered. The steady progress of the colony, notwithstanding all its reverses, 
combined with the rapid increase of the free population, brought about a condition of 
things which rendered military rule no longer possible. The colonists demanded the 
rights and privileges of British subjects, and this demand was felt to be so natural and 
so just, that it continued with increasing strength until it was satisfied. 

With .Sir Charles Fitzroy came in a new order of Governors, neither soldiers nor 
sailors, but gentlemen of high official or social standing, whose previous experience better 
fitted them for the performance of their duties than that of their predecessors. A Legis- 
lative Council, consisting of one-third Crown nominees and two-thirds elected members, 
established in 1843, had brought the principle of popular representation partially into play. 
It gave parliamentary voice to public opinion, and put pressure on the Administration 
to govern in harmony with the wishes of the people. The Governor, too, though still 
nominally absolute, rested largely on the advice of the experienced officers who presided 
over the different departments — so much so, that it ma)- be said that during Sir Charles 
Fitzroy's term of ofifice the colony was really governed by the Colonial Secretary, Sir 
E. Deas-Thomson, a gentleman of considerable capacity and high character. 

This state of things happily prepared the way for the introduction of responsible 
government, under which the Viceroy should reign but not rule, following the advice of 
his Cabinet in all but certain reserved matters of Imperial importance. This system has 
now lasted for over thirty years without any serious hitch, anil with the result that the 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



95 




SIR JOHN YOUXC. (I.ORI) LISGAK). 



colonists have become completely educated in the work of self-governmeot, understanding 
fully their powtns, their opportunities and their responsibilities, while all traces of the 
absolutist system have entirely disappeared. Under this regime six Governors have suc- 
cessively represented the Queen— namely, Sir William Denison, Sir John Young (Lord 
Lisgar), the Earl of Belmore, Sir Hercules Robinson, 
Lord Augustus Loftus and Lord Carrington. Though 
very different in their previous experience and in their 
indi\Idual temperament, and though differently estimated 
by the people of New South Wales, they have all entered 
fairly into the spirit of the British Constitution in its 
modern phase, while maintaining the dignity of their office. 
On several occasions since the granting of the new 
Constitution they have differed in opinion from their 
advisers, especially in respect of granting dissolutions of 
Parliament, the pardoning of prisoners, and the relation 
of the Governor as Commander-in-Chief to the discipline 
of the military, forces. But those differences, though 
resulting sometimes in a ministerial resignation, have 
produced no serious political crisis. The Governors have, on the whole, held the balance 
impartially between the different political parties, using their personal influence indirectly, 
rather than directly, while at the same time remaining the confidential advisers of the 
Crown, and the protectors of its prerogative. In a small communit)', the acts of every 
public man are exposed to searching criticism, and it was, therefore, not to be expected 
that all they did could be approved of by all parties ; but under their presidency the 
constitutional system has worked without any dangerous friction, and there has been no 

parliamentary appeal against any of their actions — a 
fact which speaks well not only for the system, but 
for the men who had no small share in its representation. 
Wentworth himself did not remain in the colony to 
give his personal services at the initiation of the consti- 
tutional system he had laboured so hard to establish — a 
task which devolved on the gentlemen who had already 
gained parliamentary experience in the mixed nominee 
and representative Council, and who secured, to start 
with, the assistance of one or two old heads of depart- 
ments. Wentworth returned to the colony during the 
Administration of Sir John Young. He had contended 
ardently for the principle of a nominated Upper House, 
because he thought a Chamber so constituted was ana- 
logous to the House of Lords, and formed the best possible protection against rash 
democratic lec^islation ; but he did not foresee the use to which nomineeism could be put. 
Under the Constitution Act, the first Legislative Council was nominated for a limited 
term of years, and just prior to the close of this term, the Government of the day 
suddenly nominated twenty-one gentlemen, with a view to force the passage of a 




THE EARL OK liELMOKE. 



96 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

particular Bill. This " swamping " of the Council destroyed Wentworth's belief in the 
principle of nomineeism, and made him a convert to that of election. At the request 
of the Governor he accepted the office of President of the newly-appointed Legislative 
Council, in order that he might assist in preparing a Constitution for the Upper House, 
"which should supersede the present one, and prevent the recurrence of any future 
attack upon its independence." A Bill to make the Upper House elective was introduced 
into the Council in 1861, and referred to a Select Committee, of which Wentworth was 
the Chairman. The Bill passed through the Council, but it was shelved in the Assembly. 

The day after the third reading took place in the Council, the aged statesman 
announced his intention of resigning his office and returning to England, where he died 
eleven years afterwards — not the first, and not likely to be the last, of those reformers 
who have lived long enough to be partially dissatisfied with the working of institutions 
they have spent the best part of their lives in demanding and establishing. At his own 
request ' his remains were brought to Sydney for interment near his old residence at 
Vaucluse, one of the many beautiful spots which adorn the shores of Sydney Harbour. 
The Government accorded him a public funeral, and though a new generation had grown 
up since the date of his great services, the immense attendance of people attested the 
respect in which his memory was held. 

Sir William Denison succeeded Governor Fitzroy in the month of January, 1855, and 
in his opening speech at the meeting of the Legislative Council in the following June 
urged the importance of providing for the education of children, the development of 
the railway system and the subsidising of a regular mail service with England. In the 
month of October in the same year the Governor sent to the Legislative Council a 
message enclosing an Act of Parliament, by which the Queen had given assent to a Bill 
for conferring a Constitution on New South Wales, accompanied by a despatch from 
Lord John Russell expressing a hope that the new institution might prove a solid and 
permanent advantage ; and in the year following a general election was held and the 
first responsible Ministry formed by Stuart Donaldson, Colonial Secretary, his colleagues 
being Thomas Holt, Treasurer ; W. M. Manning, Attorney-General ; J. B. Darvall, 
Solicitor-General ; G. R. Nichols, Secretary for Lands and Works ; and W. C. Mayne, 
the representative of the Government in the Council. The first Parliament assembled on 
the 22nd of May, when Sir Alfred Stephen was appointed President of the Council, and 
Daniel Cooper was elected Speaker of the Assembly. A Bill to amend the electoral law, 
in which the number of members was increased to eight)-, was passed ; but an attempt 
to regulate Chinese immigration by the imposition of a poll-tax of three pounds a head 
was thrown out, decisive legislation on this matter being deferred for over thirty years. 

The change from the old system of government to the new was happih' contempo- 
raneous with the new life on which Australia entered as a consequence of the gold- 
discoveries. A fresh and vigorous population poured in ; pastoral enterprise found enlarged 
support in the rapidly-expanding local market for animal food ; new industries began to 
spring up, and that passion for wealth which, in spite of the selfishness it engenders 
and the many social evils that follow in its train, has yet done so much to raise up 
great industrial communities, seized upon the whole people. This necessarily re-acted on 
the political life of the community. There was a short struggle between the newl)-- 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



97 



enfranchised population and the 
old dominant party, to which, 
under an enlarged suffrage, 
there could be but one termina- 
tion. The old party politics 
of the colony from that time 
disappeared, and the questions 
which divided the people, and 
divided them differently, were 
such as related to the disposal 
of the public lands, the con- 
nection between Church and 
State, public education, the 
extension and distribution of 
the suffrage, the incidence of 
taxation, and the relative merits 
of Free-trade and Protection — 
some of which questions are 
even now undertrointr discussion. 
The material progress made 
by the colony under the system 
of self-government exceeded all 
its previous experience. Tele- 
graphic communication was es- 
tablished between Victoria and 
South Australia by the com- 
pletion of a line to Albury, 
and the report of an alleged 
discovery of rich gold-fields on 
the Fitzroy River, at Keppel 
Bay, was the cause of a con- 
siderable "rush" from Sydney 
and Melbourne. The separa- 
tion of Moreton I^ay from New 
South Wales, and its erection 
into a separate colony under 
the name of Oueen.sland, took 
place in 1859. ^ he pastoral 
industry was still the country's 
main-stay ; and stimulated by 
large profits this form of 

commercial enterprise greatly expanded. The squatters pushed further and further into 
the great western plains, and it was found that districts once despised as utterly useless 
were very valuable for fattening sheep and cattle, as the .salt-bush that grew in the 




gg AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

interior was both wholesome and nutritious. More and more the country lying back 
from the river frontages was taken up and utilized. Wells were sunk and dams were 
made to secure water. Flocks and herds multiplied ; there was an immense increase 
in the export of wool, and in the sale of live-stock to supply the meat market in 
Victoria. Agriculture also took a fresh start, especially in the growth of maize along 
the coast, in dairy produce, and in the cultivation of sugar on the northern rivers. 
Wheat-culture was considerably checked by the appearance of rust, but in the inland 
districts farming progressed near the townships, and supplied the wants of the settlers who 
were occupying the back country. The growth of wheat for the metropolis had to await 
the construction of railways to furnish cheap transit. 

During Denison's Administration the salary of the Governor was fixed at five 
thousand pounds, the railway to Parramatta was opened, the first submarine cable 
connecting Australia with the outside world was laid. In Parliament much legislation 
was accomplished dealing with the public lands and the establishment of an ocean postal 
sen' ice ; with Chinese immigration and the condition of the working-classes. The year 1857 
was marked by the disastrous wrecks of the Dunbar and the Catherine Adanisou at the 
Heads. Sir William Denison was transferred to the Madras Presidency in 1861, and was 
succeeded in the Government of New South Wales by Sir John Young, afterwards known 
as Lord Lisgar, who arrived in the colony in the month of March of the same year. 

Young's accession to office was marked by a parliamentary crisis which took place 
shortly after his arrival in the colony. It was occasioned by the appointment of twent)-- 
one new members to the Upper House, in consequence of the action taken by the 
Council in regard to the Crown Lands Alienation Bill, introduced by Mr. (afterwards 
Sir John) Robertson. During this Governor's Administration Messrs. Henry Parkes and 
William Bede Dalley — who have since held the highest positions in the country, the 
latter being elevated to the Privy Council — were appointed Commissioners to visit 
England for the purpose of inducing voluntary immigration to the colony. 

Among other instances of the new era of progress upon which the colony was 
steadily entering since the bestowal by the Home authorities of responsible government 
may be mentioned the authorization of tram-way construction and the extensive legislation in 
connection with the public lands of the colony — legislation which engaged the attention of 
Parliament for a very considerable period. During Governor Young's reign also, the 
first intercolonial conference was held in Melbourne, and had for its objects the discussion 
of transportation, immigration, the postal service, and other matters of general wide-spread 
importance. The gold-fields were being actively exploited, and at Burrangong several 
riots took place, these being occasioned by an invasion of the field by an army of 
Chinese, to whom the diggers very naturally objected. A military force was thereupon 
dispatched from Sydney, armed with field-pieces, but the disturbance was fortunately 
quelled by the withdrawal of the Chinese. Governor Young retired from office in the 
month of December, 1867, and was succeeded in the month of January following by 
the Earl of Belmore, whose Administration was marked by the withdrawal of Imperial 
troops from the colony, whilst that of Governor Robinson is memorable for the 
successful establishment of telegraphic communication between Great Britain and the 
Australasian Colonies, and the holding in Sydney of an intercolonial conference for the 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



99 



consideration of an improved ocean mail service, a policy of intercolonial Free-trade, and 
other questions generally affecting the welfare of the various Australian Governments. 

The progress thus made by the colony was fully manifested at an International 
Exhibition held in the year 1879, which grew out of an ambitious attempt made by the 
Agricultural Society to enlarge its display by inviting competitive exhibits from abroad. 
This Society, which had grown into vigorous 
life as a consequence of the enlarged rural 
enterprise of the colony, had successfully held 
several Annual Exhibitions in a buildinof erected 
for that purpose by the City Corporation in 
the Prince Alfred Park. These local exhibi- 
tions proved so attractive and beneficial that 
the Committee determined to attempt an 
international one, but the response to its 
invitation was so much in excess of what had 
been anticipated, that the affair outgrew the 
power and resources of the Society. 

To recall what had been done was, how- 
ever, impossible ; and to prevent a failure 
which might have discredited the colony the 
Government took the matter over, and entrusted 
the management to a large Honorary Commis- 
sion. A handsome and commodious building 
was hastily erected on a commanding site in 




the Inner Domain; its noble dome being a 



SIR HERCULES ROBINSON. 



striking feature in the landscape as seen from 

the Harbour ; and one of the first public acts of Lord Augustus Loftus after his 
arrival in the colony was the opening of one of those world-famous worlds' fairs of 
which so young a country may justly feel proud. The Exhibition was a great success, 
nearly all the civilized countries of the world being represented. It cost the colony 
about a quarter of a million, but it was deemed that the money had been well spent. 
The resources of the country were displayed to great advantage, and as a natural 
consequence commerce was greatly quickened. The Exhibition Building was unfortu- 
nately burnt down two years afterwards, the handsome erection being totally destroyed. 

A still more striking proof of the power and resources of the colony was furnished 
in 1885, during the Administration of Governor Loftus, by the dispatch of a military 
Contingent to the English Army then serving in the Soudan, which had been work- 
ing its way up the Nile in the endeavour to rescue General Gordon. The death of 
that gallant officer, and the capture of Khartoum, produced a profound impression in the 
, colony, and the Government, under the idea that an expedition from Suakim to the 
Nile was about to be immediately undertaken, offered to land at that point, within sixty 
days, a body of infantry and artillery, together with the necessary supply of horses. 
The offer was accepted. By dint of great exertion everything was in readiness by the 
day named ; two large steam-ships, the Iberia and the Australasian, left Port Jackson 



lOO 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



with the first militarj' support ever tendered by any of these colonies to the mother- 
countr>-. and no more brilHant and exciting spectacle had ever been seen in Sydney 
than was witnessed on the day of the departure of the troops. The military plans for 
the Egyptian campaign were subsequently modified, and the little army returned in 
safety without having seen much service ; but the impression produced in England by 
the spontaneous loyalty of the Colonies was extraordinary. It gave rise to a new estimate 
of the value of the Colonial Empire, and to this day it is impossible to calculate 
fully all the indirect results that have flowed from this action. It stimulated greatly 
the discussion of the whole question of Imperial Federation ; it gave a new aspect to 
the problem of the naval defence of the Empire, which afterwards bore fruit in a joint 
parliamentary action on the part of all the colonies with the exception of Queensland ; 
and it greatly augmented the English interest in the Indian and Colonial Exhibition. 

Prior to this appearance of an Australian colony as an ally of the mother-country, 
the interests of Australia in the Pacific had been brought prominently under notice. It 
was mainly at the instance of the Australian colonies that the English Government 
consented, during the Administration of Sir Hercules Robinson, to take over from King 
Thakombau the Fiji Islands. The project had been discussed of making these islands a 
dependency of one of the colonies, but it was ultimately thought better, for the present 
at least, to constitute them a Crown colony, and this course having been adopted the 
Colonial Governments were not made contributors. A different policy was pursued a 
few years afterwards in connection with the island of New Guinea. The Queensland 
Government annexed by a formal proclamation all that part of this island not claimed 
by the Dutch ; and it did this, not from any desire for new territory, but because it 
regarded the possession of that part of New Guinea as important to the future security 
of the colony. This act was disallowed by the Home Government, on the ground that it 
was beyond the power of a Colonial Administration thus to enlarge the boundaries of 
the Empire. The Colonial Governments assembled in conference urged the annexation 
as an Imperial act, and the English Government so far yielded as to send an expedi- 
tion to plant its flag on the southern coast, and declare a vague protectorate there, the 
Colonies agreeing to contribute the sum of fifteen thousand sterling a year. The German 
Government immediately followed suit by hoisting its flag on the northern coast, much 
to the chagrin of the colonists, and a dividing line between the territories of the two 
countries was subsequently agreed upon. 

The connection between the colonies and the mother-county, which is visibly main- 
tained by the presence of the Governor as the representative of Her Majesty, has been 
twice marked during the last few years by visits from members of the Royal family ; 
the Duke of Edinburgh having made the Australian tour in command of the frigate 
Galatea, and the two eldest sons of the Prince of Wales having visited the colony as 
midshipmen on board the Bacchante. On each occasion the Royal visitors were received 
with the utmost cordiality and loyalty. The last representative of Her Majesty in New 
South Wales, Lord Carrington, arrived in Sydney on the 12th of December, 1885, 
and received a hearty welcome. His Administration has been marked by several occur- 
rences of more or less importance, but he will in the main be recollected as the 
Governor in whose term of office the Centenary of the settlement was celebrated. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



101 



The year 1888 is a red-letter year in the history of the colony as being the one 
hundredth anniversary of its birthday, and the Centenary of New South Wales— and, in 
fact, Australia as a whole — was celebrated by general public festivities. On the 24th of 
January a statue of the Queen was unveiled in Chancery Square, Sydney ; and on the 
25th the Centennial Intercolonial Agricultural Exhibition was opened in Moore Park. On 
this day also a complimentary picnic was given by the Roman Catholic laity to the 
archbishops, bishops, and other 
ecclesiastical dignitaries of that 
church on a visit to the city of 
Sydney, in connection with the 
Centenary celebrations. But the 
great event in the programme was 
the opening and dedication of the 
Centennial Park on the 27th of 
January, 1888, just one hundred 
jears from the date of the founda- 
tion by Captain Arthur Phillip of 
the little settlement of soldiers 
and convicts on the shores of 
Sydney Cove. The reserve out 
of which the Park has been formed 
was previously known as the 
Lachlan Swamps, and was for 
many years the place whence the 
principal water-supply of the city 
of Sydney was drawn The area 
of the Centennial Park is equal 
to about one thousand acres ; in 
the centre are four or five lagoons, 
and the view from the higher 
portions of the land is both ex- 
tensive and beautiful. The occasion 

was marked by a procession from Government House, headed by the Governors of all the 
Colonies. A naval and military parade also formed part of the programme, and between 
thirty and forty thousand spectators were present at the ceremony. On the same day a 
State Banquet was held in the Exhibition Building ; the city \vas given over to holidays 
and rejoicings for the time being ; the streets were gaily decorated and at night they 
presented avenues of illuminary designs. General public holidays were proclaimed 
throughout the colony ; a national regatta, a trades and labour demonstration, a working- 
lads' picnic, and Harbour fireworks and pyrotechnic displays by night from the ships of 
war were also included in the festivities. The foundation-stone of the new Houses of 
Parliament was laid in the Domain on the 31st of January, and all denominations held 
religious services during the week in commemoration of the one hundredth birthday of the 
land sighted by Captain Cook in the year 1770. The celebration of the Centenary of the 




LORD CAKKIXUTU.X. 



I02 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



colony of New South Wales was indeed in every respect an unqualified and genuine success. 
At this point in its development the country had time to pause and survey the progress 
it had made, and to gather from the experience of the past new hopes and fresh 
aspirations for the future. For the hundred years which had just elapsed its history 
had indeed been a varied one. It had compressed within a centur\' the progress which 
the nations of the old-world had taken ages to realize. It had grown from the stage 
of an experimental outpost of purely military occupation and convict settlement to a 
nation representing all the complex conditions of a highly-organized society — the nomad, 
the shepherd, the digger giving place in turn to each other, and each contributing to 
bring about that culminating point on which the country stands to-day. 

Lord Carrington will, moreover, in addition to the Centenary, be remembered by the 
lively interest he displayed in the progress and public institutions of the colony, as 
well as by his hospitality and personal cordiality of manner ; for this Governor made 
himself highly popular amongst all classes, and in his hands the office of Viceroy pre- 
served all its usefulness and importance. After a term of office lasting for a period of 
nearly five years His Excellency left the colony in the month of November, 1890, his 
departure being made the occasion of a series of festivities by which the people sought 
to convey their appreciation of both his social and political fitness for a position which 
had never been filled by one who had made himself more popular. Lord Carrington was 
succeeded in the Administration by Sir Alfred Stephen, the Lieutenant-Governor, until 
the arrival of Lord Jersey on the 14th of January, 1891. His Lordship and Lady 
Jersey have, since their landing in New South Wales, achieved a popularity which well 
maintains the social prestige of the Representatives of Royalty in Australia. His 
Excellency's term of office has been prominently marked by the holding of the Federa- 
tion Convention at Sydney, in March, 1891. 








EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 



BASS AND FLINDERS. 



\ MONO the most determined and intrepid successors of Captain Cook and the earlier 
^*- Australian navigators must be reckoned Captain Matthew Flinders and Surgeon 
Bass, to whose skill, courage, and perseverance we owe the discovery of the straits which 
separate the Australian con- 
tinent from Tasmania, the 
discovery of Kangaroo 
Island, the h)'drography of 
Tasmania, the exploration 
of the coasts of New South 
Wales and South Australia ; 
of those portions of Western 
Australia known as Nuyts 
Land and Leeuwin Land ; 
and the determination of 
numerous points in the Gulf 
of Carpentaria, Torres Straits 
and the coast of Arnhem 
Land. This valuable and 
varied work was performed 
by them first in conjunction, 
then by Bass alone, and 
finally by Flinders, who 
probably survived his com- 
rade by some years. 

One of the first works 
undertaken by Captain 
Hunter after his arrival in 

New South Wales in 1 788, was a marine survey of Botany and Broken Bays and Port 
Jackson, with the greater number of the rivers which empty into them. Captain Cook 
had certainly examined Botany Bay, but he had seen the entrances only of the other 
two harbours. Hunter's survey, the first that was made of these inlets, included the 
intermediate portions of the coasts, and was published shortly after the charts had been 
sent to England by Governor Phillip. In 1795 Captain Hunter made his second voyage 
to New South Wales, bringing with him His Majesty's armed vessels Reliance and 
Supply ; on board the former ship was a midshipman, recently returned from a South Sea 
voyage, who, moved by a passion for exploration and novel adventure, seized the opportunity 
for the indulgence of his leading characteristic on virgin soil. This adventurous midshipman 
was Matthew Flinders, and with him the history of Australian coastal exploration begins. 




CAPTAIN MATTHEW FLINDERS. 



I04 



A US TRA LA SI A ILL US TRA TED. 




Matthew Flinders was born at Donington, in Lincolnshire, England, in the year 
1760, and early entered the merchant service, but quitted it for the Navy, which he 
joined as a midshipman in 1 793. Donington is not far from Sleaford, in the same 
county, and- the latter was the birthplace of George Bass. It is more than probable 
that the two explorers went to school together. When Flinders landed at Port Jackson 
in September, 1 795, the knowledge possessed by the colonists of even the three harbours 
mentioned was of the most rudimentary and imperfect kind. Lieutenant Richard Bowen 
had indeed entered Jervis Bay, and to the north, Surveyor-General Grimes and Captain 
Broughton, of H.M.S. Providence, had examined Port Stephens ; l)ut of the intermediate 
parts of the coast, both in a northerly and in a southerly direction, little more was known 
than could be learnt from Cook's general chart, while the exploration of the more remote 
coastal indentations indicated by the famous sailor had been entirely neglected. 

The chance of adding something to hydrographical science fired the ardour of 
Flinders, and in George Bass, who came out with Captain Hunter as surgeon of the 
Reliance, he found a brave and determined coadjutor. Bass was the son of a farmer 
who had a holding at Asworthy ; but unfortunately for the future explorer he lost this 

parent in his infancy. From his boyhood Bass 
gave his heart to the sea, and although his 
mother sought to cure him of what she 
regarded as folly by having him apprenticed 
to a Boston surgeon, her efforts were without 
avail. Curiously enough P^linders also was 
intended for the medical profession, his father 
being a doctor ; but his passion for the sea, 
first stimulated, according to his own con- 
fession, by the perusal of " Robinson Crusoe," 
overcame all the opposition of his family. 

These two courageous men resolved to 
complete the survey of the east coast of New 
South Wales to the best of their ability and 
to the utmost of their procurable means and 
opportunities. The first venture was made in 
a little boat only eight feet long, the famous 
Tom Thumb ; and Flinders, Bass and a boy 
formed the entire crew. In this frail craft in 
the month following the arrival of the Reliance 
and the Supply, they left Port Jackson for 
Botany Bay, and ascending George's River, 
explored its tortuous course for twenty miles 
beyond the point at which Hunter's survey 
had terminated. The result of this expedition was the establishment of a d(fp6t under 
the name of Bankstown, which has since grown into a flourishing suburb of Sydney. 

In 1796, upon the return of Flinders from a voyage to Norfolk Island, the 
intrepid explorers sailed out of Port Jackson on a fresh March morning in search 



FUNDERS AND BASS IN THE "TOM THUMB. 



EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 



•o5 



of a reported river, which proved a miserable brook. They proceeded south-west past 
Red Point in safety, but were nearly drowned when makinj^ the return voyage in the 
nii^ht. As described in the graphic language of- F"linders : — " The shade of the cliffs 
over our heads, and the noise of the surfs breaking at their feet, were the directions 
by which our course was steered parallel to the coast." While Bass held the sheet of 
the sail in his hand, 
occasionally drawing it 
in a few inches when 
he saw a more than 
usually heavy sea com- 
ing; blinders, steering 
with an oar, had tcj 
keep the little boat 
from broaching to ; in 
his own words, "a 
single wrong move- 
ment, or a moment's 
inattention," would 
have sent them to 
the bottom. The box's 
duty was baling out 
the water, which not 
all their care and 
de.xterity could prevent 

from breaking over their tin\- skiff. At a 
favourable moment the\ sliippcd tlieir mast and 
lay to at W'atla - Moi^'lcc ( Prt)\idential Cove), 
about three or four miles southwaril of Port 
Hacking or Dccban. Eight da\s from setting 
out, and after a voyage of a most perilous 

character, the Tom Thumh was safely brought to its moorings alongside II. M.S. 
Reliance in Port Jackson. Near Red Point, Tom ThumUs Lagoon commemorates 
the voyage, and preserves in its name a memento of this preliminary expedition of the 
adventurous voyagers, whose future exploits were to surpass anything previously attempted. 

During the following year, while Flinders was occupied with his duties on shipboard, 
Bass made several excursions into the interior, one such resulting in the survey of the 
course of the Grose. About this time the Sydney Cove was wrecked on the Furneaux 
Islands ; and it was in the September of the same year that Lieutenant John Shortland, 
while returning from a chase after some runaway convicts — who had seized a boat with 
the intention of reaching China — discovered the Hunter River, upon the shores of which 
the settlement of Newcastle was afterwards established. 

On the 3rd of December, 1797, Bass sailed southward in a whale-boat, manned by 
six niL-n and provisioned for six weeks. In this boat he discovered Twofold Bay, 
doubled Cape Howe, and found himself on New Year's day of the. following year 




UASSS biK.vris. 



,o6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

« 

coasting Long Beach. On the 4th of January Bass made Western Port, the limit of his 
voyage southward, thence sailing for Port Jackson a fortnight afterwards and arriving in 
Sydney Cove, after a long experience of foul weather, on the night of the 24th of 
February. The results of this voyage supplemented the previous knowledge of the 
coast by discoveries reaching from the Ram Head to Western Port, the new coast 
being traced three hundred miles. In the language of Bass's admirer, Flinders: 
" A voyage expressly undertaken for discovery in an open boat, and in which six 
hundred miles of coast, mostly in a boisterous climate, was explored, has not perhaps 
its equal in the annals of maritime history." 

While Bass was prosecuting his explorations in the whale-boat. Flinders, on board 
the schooner Francis, was proceeding to the wreck of the Sydney Cove at Preservation 
Island, having left Port Jackson on the 3rd of February. After passing and naming 
Green Cape, Flinders followed Bass's route and sighted Wilson's Promontory. The Kent's 
Group, the Babel Isles, and Cape I3arren Island were among Flinders's discoveries 
during this voyage, from which he returned in March. On landing at Sydney on the 
7th of that month he found that Bass had arrived a fortnight before him. 

On the 7th of October, 1798, Flinders and Bass again set sail from Port Jackson, and 
following the Tasmanian coast discovered Port Dalrymple and surveyed the River 
Tamar. Resuming their course westward, the explorers discovered and named a number 
of capes and islands along the northern coast, and by doubling Cape Grim proved 
conclusively the existence of a strait between the Australian Continent and the island 
then known as Van Diemen's Land. Voyaging southward they completed their survey 
of the Tasmanian Coast as far as the Derwent, returning to Port Jackson on the iith of 
January. To the passage between the Continent and Tasmania Ciovernor Hunter gave the 
name of Bass's Straits, and no honour was more deserved than the one thus conferred on 
this intrepid and persevering mariner. Bass set sail for Home shortly after his return 
to Port Jackson, and died, it is said, in South America, though other accounts state 
that he w^as last heard of in the Straits of Malacca. Flinders felt deeply the loss of 
his courageous coadjutor and wrote : " Of the assistance of my able friend Bass I was 
deprived, he having quitted the station to return to England." In July of the same 
year -Flinders sailed on a voyage northward to survey the coast as far as Glass-house 
and Hervey's Bays. This voyage resulted in the discovery of Moreton Bay, and 
was conducted with the thoroughness characteristic of the man. 

Flinders i.\ the "Investigator." 
Flinders returned to England in the Reliance, in iSoo, with the object of inducing 
the Admiralty to place him in command of a suitable vessel in which he could prosecute 
a thorough examination of the southern coast of the Australian Continent, which was no 
longer the terra incognita of La Perouse or of Cook. Antoine de Bougainville had passed 
Cape York, and left the evidences of French discovery in the Louisiade Archipelago. 
M'Cluer, Bligh (of Bounty fame), Portlock, Bampton and Alt had explored among the 
different island groups clustering round the north-eastern coast of Australia. Southern 
Australia had been least visited, but even there De St. Alouarn was reported to have 
anchored off Cape Leeuwin ; Vancouver had entered King George's Sound ; and Bruny 



EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 



107 




CAPTAIN NICHOLAS liAL'DIN. 



D'Entrecasteaux, when in search of the unfortunate La P(^rouse had sailed along the 
coast of the land discovered by the old Dutch mariner who gave the name of Nuyts 
Land to the southern shores of Western Australia, which he coasted for many hundred miles. 

The Lords of the Admiralty, though seldom given to profuse expenditure for 
scientific purposes, were— when Flinders submitted his proposals to them— in a mood of 
opportune complaisance, and on the 25th of 
January, 1801, gave him the command of 
the Investigator, in which he left England on 
the 1 8th of July of the same year. His 
crew, including ofificers, numbered eighty-eight, 
and was a truly remarkable one. Amongst 
those on board were John Crosley the 
astronomer, who afterwards left the expedition 
at the Cape of Good Hope ; Dr. Robert 
Brown, the greatest botanist of his age and 
the friend of Sir Joseph Banks ; William 
Westall, the equally celebrated landscape 
painter ; Ferdinand Bauer, the natural history 
painter; R. !\1. Fowler (afterwards admiral), 
first lieutenant ; S. M. F'linders, the captain's 
brother, second lieutenant; and six midshipmen, 
one of whom subsequently became Governor 

of Tasmania, and made a name in the history of maritime discovery as Sir John Franklin, 
the ill-fated hero of Arctic exploration, and a martyr to the cause of geographical research. 

Flinders began his further work of discovery and marine survey by coasting the 
Great Australian Bight ; he then traced the southern boundary of the country now known 
as South Australia. On the 8th of April, 1802, he entered PIncounter Bay, and found 
there Nicholas Baudin, of the French ship Lc Geographc, separated from her consort, 
Le Nat2iralistc, by a gale in Bass's .Straits. Flinders and Baudin interchanged civilities, 
Dr. Robert I5rown, the naturalist, acting as interpreter. 

Baudin had been sent out by the Republic to make good the French claims to 
Southern Australia, from Western Port to Nuyts Archipelago, which they called 7V;';r 
Napoleon. The French entirely ignored . the claims of England, or the discoveries of 
English sailors. Spencer Gulf was Golfc Bonaparte ; Kangaroo Lsland masqueraded as 
L Isle Dceres ; Gulf St. Vincent lost its identity in Golfe Josdpliine ; not even the 
smallest bay or inlet escaped the infliction of a Gallic christening. 

That the French knew perfectly well that this was a fraudulent effort to appropriate 
the fruits of earlier explorers is amply proved by the remark addressed to Flinders by 
Baudin's first lieutenant at the house of Governor Kijig, when they met in Sydney : 
" Captain, if we had not been kept so long picking up shells and catching butterflies 
at Van Diemen's Land, you would not have discovered the south coast before us." 
Flinders names Cape Banks, or Ihiffon, as the eastern limit of French discovery. 

Following Grant's course in the Lady N'c/son — the first vessel to sail through Bass's 
Straits — Flinders passed King's Island and examined the entrance channel of the wide 



io8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

bay named Port Phillip by Grant ten weeks before. Quitting this harbour Flinders 
sailed straight to Sydney Cove, where he arrived on the 9th of May, 1802. Here he 
found Baudin's consort, Lc Naturalists commanded b\- Hamelin, and Baudin himself 
arrived in the month of June following. 

On the 22nd of July Flinders again sailed to carry out his long-cherished intention 
of surveying Torres Straits. In this voyage he was seriously embarrassed b) the Great 
Barrier Reef, having sought a passage for fourteen days and sailed more than five 
hundred miles before one could be found to the open sea. Arriving in the Gulf of 
Carpentaria he began his survey with characteristic thoroughness ; to use his own words, 
he " followed land so closely that the washing of the surf upon it should be visible, 
and no opening, nor anything of interest escape notice." 

On the 8th of April, 1803, the Investigator made the Dutch settlement of Coepang, 
Timor, and sailing thence for Point D'Entrecasteaux, Flinders intended to make a further 
and more complete examination of the southern coasts. Dysentery and fever, however, 
compelled an immediate return to Port Jackson. 

The Investigator being too old to again take to sea, Minders embarked on board 
the Porpoise for England, in company with the Cato and the Bridgexvalcr ; but the con- 
sorts had left port only a week when the former two vessels ran aground on a reef. 
Captain Palmer of the Bridgewater, who had escaped a like fate, cowardh- deserting his 
companions in their extremity. Flinders immediately assumed the command. Leaving the 
main body in charge of the captain of the Porpoise, he and a small crew set out for 
Port Jackson in an open boat, and after a terribly arduous journey arrived there on the 
8th of September. Governor King immediately dispatched the Rolla lo tiie scene of the 
wreck. Flinders accompanying in the Cuiuberland, a crazy boat of twenty-five tons in 
which he hoped to make England after conveying assistance to his shipwrecked comrades. 
They arrived at Wreck Reef on the 7th of October, where the Citii/bcrlaiid parted com- 
pany and continued her voyage, calling at the Dutch settlement of Coepang ; whence 
after a short stay Flinders again set sail for Europe by way of Mauritius. The vessel 
becoming more unseaworthy every day compelled him to call in at St. Louis, where he 
and his people were promptly imprisoned by General De Caen, the brench Governor. 
The Cumberland was confiscated, her captain branded an imposter, and all the valuable 
charts, journals and papers relating to the Investigator s voyage were seized. 

The substance of the discoveries made b)- Flinders in the Investigator was afterwards 
published in Paris as the work of Baudin, and although the charts and other matters 
relating to the voyage came again into Flinders's hands, the third journal could never be 
recovered. He was kept prisoner for six years, not being released until 1810. This 
seems almost like poetic justice, for as the French now treated Minders, the old 
Honfleur navigator, Binot Paulmyer, Sieur de Gonneville, had been treated by the 
English three hundred years before. 

In the annals of Australian coastal discovery, Matthew Flinders will ever rank second 
only to the famous Captain Cook. Among the man)- things Australians owe to him is the 
popular application of the name of their Continent — a name before used only very 
occasionally by chart-makers and geographers. In a note in the first volume of his great 
voyage, he .says : — " Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it 



EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 



109 



would have been to convert it into Australia, as being more agreeable to the ear. and 
an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth." 

OxLEv AND Cunningham. 

Although the coast-line of the Australian Continent had been accurately surveyed, 
inland exploration had made but little progress. For a period of about five and twenty years 
after the landing of Governor Phillip the 

country beyond the Blue Mountains . . 

remained an unexplored territory, and 
rewards were offered for the discovery 
of even a sheep-track. Governor Phillip 
had certainly made a trip towards the 
range which shut in this terra incognita, 
and his trip had resulted in the dis- 
covery of the Carmarthen and Richmond 
Hills, but further exploration ceased at 
the foot of this seemingly impassable 
barrier. Dawes, Bass, Barreillier, Cayley 
and others had in turn attempted the 
discovery of the golden interior, but all 
these attempts had resulted in failure 
and disappointment. Most of the early 
assaults upon the grim bastions of Nature 
were made by way of the valleys, which 
are really gorges, and which to this day 
are difficult to traverse. .Success was not 
achieved till the dividinyr ridee between 
the Cox and the Grose was followed. 

The first expedition of value was that 
of Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth, who, 

following the ridge, descended the slopes of Mount York, caught a glimpse of the V'ale 
of Clwyd, and climbed to the summit of Mount Blaxland. Surveyor Evans followed the 
track of Lawson and his comrades, and extended their discoveries over a distance of 
ninet)'-eight miles further inland. Two years afterwards Governor Macquarie opened 
the road to Bathurst, and P'vans was again sent out to follow the course of the 
Lachlan. The result of this expedition was the preparation of another on a more 
important scale, which_ was sent out under Survejor-General Oxley in 181 7, to trace the 
courses of the Lachlan and the Macquarie to their debouchures. 

Oxley set out from Sydney on the 6th of April, 1817, and passing through Queen 
Charlotte's Valley, struck the Lachlan on the 28th of that month, and followed its course 
north-west through poor swampy country until it became lost in the marshes lying east 
of Field's Plains. In the hope of again finding the river the party turned south-west, 
and after enduring great privations from bad water — which particularly affected the 
horses — skirted west and north-west round Mount Cayley and Mount Brogden. Here 




CUNNINGHA.M S MONUMENT, BOTANICAL GARDENS, 
SYDNEY. 



I lO 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




the explorers discovered a serious loss of provisions, and were compelled to shorten the 
daily allowance of food, which considerably lessened the effectiveness of the expedition. 

On the 23rd of June, Oxley and Cunningham again struck the Lachlan, north of 
the Peel Range, and followed it in a south-westerly direction until' it was lost in stag- 
nant and impure marshes. Fearful of the rapid diminution of provisions, and ignorant 
of the immediate proximity of the parent stream, the Murrumbidgee, the party began 
the return journey on the 9th of July, and leaving the course of the Lachlan on the 
following month, journeyed in a north-easterly route across barren country, which became 
more fertile as they neared the Macquarie, which river was sighted on the 22nd of 
August and its course followed to the town of Bathurst, where the expedition terminated. 
The party had been absent for over four months, and had narrowly missed the discovery 
of the Murrumbidgee, which was effected by Ovens and Currie six years afterwards. 

On the 20th of 
S May in the following 

year, Oxley left Syd- 
ney on a second 
expedition, and fol- 
■ lowed the course of 
the Macquarie until 
it ended in country 
covered with reeds and 
under water. Crossing 
successively the Castle- 
reagh. Peel, Cockburn 
and Apsley Rivers, he 
traced the Hastings 
to Port Macquarie, 
having journeyed four 



MONUMENT TO HUME AT ALBURV. 



THE MARKED TREE, ALBURV: 

WHERE HCME AND BOVELL CROSSED THE MUBKAT. 



hundred miles in a straight line from 

the extreme western point made by 

the expedition. Finding a boat half-buried in the sand, the explorers carried it on their 

shoulders from inlet to inlet along the coast for about ninety miles until they reached 

Newcastle, whence they proceeded to Sydney after an absence of five months. In the 

month of October, 1823, Oxley went on a survey voyage to Moreton Bay, where he found 



EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 



Ill 



a white man named Pamphlet, who had been shipwrecked, living among the blacks. 
Pamphlet's information led to the discovery of a river emptying into Moreton Bay named 
by Oxley the Brisbane, on which is now the site of the capital of Queensland. 

As Government botanist to the Mermaid explorations to various parts of the 
Australian Coast, conducted by Captain Phillip King, Cunningham added greatly to the 
botanical knowledge of Australia ; and, as an explorer, he discovered an available route 
through the Liverpool Ranges to the fertile northern plains, besides conducting an exami- 
nation of the Cudgegong 
and Goulburn Rivers. Some 
years afterwards he dis- 
covered a gap in the coast- 
range by which the Darling 
Downs could be easily 
reached, and penetrated 
seventy-five miles west of 
Brisbane. He died in 
Sydney on the 27th of June, 
1839, and an obelisk com- 
memorating his achievements 
in the field of botanical re- 
search was erected in the 
Sydney Botanical Gardens, 
of which reserve it now 
forms one of the most pro- 
minent ornaments. 



Hume and Hovell. 

Two years after Cun- 
ningham had found an out- 
let through the Pandora 
Pass to the extensive plains 
lying north of the Liverpool 
Ranges, a private expedition 




SIR THOMAS MITCHELL. 



of an important character engaged in the work of exploration in a south-south-westerly 
direction from the county of Argyle, with the intention of intersecting the southern coast 
in a journey of from four to five hundred miles. The leaders of this expedition were 
Hamilton Hume and Captain W. H. Hovell. Hume was a native of Parramatta and a 
splendid bushman. He had been engaged in exploring work from a very early age, ■having 
with his brother, John Kennedy Hume, discovered the country called Argyle in 1814. 
He had since then accompanied Surveyor Meehan in a journey which had resulted in 
the discovery of Lake Bathurst, and he had also sailed with Lieutenant Johnson in the 
Snappers survey voyage. Hovell had previously belonged to the merchant service, and 
he was not only a bold and determined leader, but a man of great physical endu- 
rance. Setting out from Lake George they journeyed in a south-westerly direction until 



1 12 



A us TRA LA SI A ILL US TRA TED. 



they arrived on the banks of the Murrumbidgee, which river was greatly swollen by 
recent rains, and could only be crossed in a boat. Hume and one of Hovell's servants 
named Boyd swam the river, carrying a rope between their teeth, and the horses and 
bullocks were then punted over in a cart. 

On their wa\- they sighted a grand range of mountains, afterwards known as the 
Australian Alps. In November they came to the River Hume, or Murra)-, but could 
not cross it at the point of discovery. They first proceeded down the stream, but the 
continual recurrence of lagoons hindered their progress, and the\- were compelled to 
return to their starting-place, whence they journeyed east, still following the water-course 
through magnificent country. They crossed the river at .\lbury on the 17th of November, 

1824. A marked tree 
and a memorial, 
erected by the inhabi- 
tants in honour of 
Hume, now commemo- 
rate the i n c i d e n t. 
.After fording a number 
of tributaries of the 
M urray, H u me and 
Hovell discovered the 
Ovens River on the 
24th, and on the 3rd 
of the following 
month, th(; Hovell or 
Ooulburn. Iraversing 
the Julian Range and 
still journeying in a 
south - westerl)' direc- 
tion, Jillong, the i)re- 
s e n t s i 1 1? of the 
X'ictorian city of Gee- 
long, was reached on 
the 1 7th of December. 
It is remarkable that 
neither Hume nor 
Hovell was certain of 
the identity of Port 
Phillip with the har- 
bour tliscovered by 
Lieutenant Murray, and each persisted for some time after in confounding it with Western 
Port. This noteworthy expedition, which opened up a wide field for the enterprise and 
energy of the colony, was completed in sixteen weeks from its start, and was altogether 
devoid of those catastrophes which have attended so many .Australian exploring parties. 
Subsequent to this overland journey to Port Phillip, Hume accompanied Captain 




C.\PT.\IN' CH.\RLES STUKT. 




A GULLY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. 



I 



EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 1,3 

Sturt on his first expedition into the interior, and Hovell was one of the early settlers 
who left Sydney with Wright and Wetherall's party in the Fly, to forestall the I'Vench 
in their intentions on the southern coast by the establishment of a d^pdt at Western Port. 

Progress ok Exploration from 1828. 

The discoveries of Oxley and Cunningham, Hume and Hovell, greatly increased the 
knowledge of the interior, and subsequent expeditions were to a considerable extent 
divested of that keen commercial interest with which the settlers, anxious to enlarge their 
pastures, regarded the previous efforts to find the fabled El Dorado supposed to lie 
beyond the Great Dividing Range. 

Captain Sturt and Hamilton Hume, in the year 1828, conducted an expedition to 
the head of the Macquarie, and following that river in a north-westerly direction 
discovered successively the Bogan and the Darling, the latter being famed as the third 
longest river in the world, taking precedence of the Nile. In the following year Captain 
Sturt, with a well-equipped party, again set out, and sailing down the Murrumbidgee, 
reached the River Murray and followed its course to Lake Alexandrina — discovering 
while en route the debouchure of the Darling. He returned by the same route, having 
explored the entire course of the Murray from its junction with the Murrumbidgee. A 
year after this remarkable journey of Start's, Captain Barker and Mr. Kent conducted 
an examination of the district round Lake Alexandrina. During the survey. Barker was 
murdered by the blacks, after having sighted the country upon which now stands the city 
of Adelaide and its suburbs. 

In the year 1831, Major Mitchell went on a northern expedition in the direction of 
the Liverpool Plains, and traversed the country bounded by the Namoi, Darling and 
Gwydir Rivers and the Liverpool Ranges, following the Gwydir as far as the Macintyre, 
one of the first tributaries of importance to the Darling. A volunteer, named Finch, 
and two men had been sent by Mitchell from the Peel to the Hunter for stores, but 
the men were surprised and murdered by the blacks, and the stores rifled, while Finch 
was absent from the camp. Mitchell began his second expedition in the month of March, 
1835. Setting out in command of a large party of men, with drays, horses and a couple 
of boats, he followed the courses of the Darling and Bogan, and made an exhaustive 
survey of the country lying between those rivers. During this journey he was unfortunate 
in losing, near the Bogan, Richard Cunningham, the brother of that celebrated botanist 
who accompanied Oxley on his first expedition into the interior. This enthusiastic scientist, 
engrossed in the study of botanical specimens, wandered from his party and was found by the 
blacks, who murdered him when he was delirious, being frightened at his strange behaviour. 

A third expedition was directed to the Darling and Murray Rivers in the same 
year. This was the most famous of all Mitchell's journeys inland, and resulted in the 
discovery of Australia Felix. After following the course of the Lachlan to its debouchure 
in the Murrumbidgee, he passed through the Murray scrubs, and arrived at the junction 
of the latter river with the Darling. In exploring up the stream the mouth of the 
Edwards was 'passed without observation ; but the Loddon, emptying on the opposite 
side, was fully examined, and its course followed south-east for three days. Leaving 
Pyramid Creek and Mount Hope behind him, Mitchell explored across that vast tract of 



114 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

country known as the Wimmera, and then proceeded to an examination of the south- 
west corner of V'ictoria, which territory' was named by him Australia Felix. On the 
return journey the expedition traversed a vast extent of country, making numerous 
discoveries in every direction. From the summit of Mount Macedon, upon which he 
erected a stone cohrnin, Mitchell saw the white tents of the settlement of Fawkner and 
Batman, and the broad expanse of Port Phillip. He returned to Sydney by a north- 
easterly route, after one of the most extensive surveys which had then been made of 
the colon)- of New South Wales, and one which added greatly to the knowledge of that 
southern district now known as the colony of Victoria. Mitchell was knighted when the 
news of this discovery was received in England. 

After the discovery of Australia Felix, Leichhardt's courageous journey to Port 
Essington, Sturt's expedition to the Central Desert, and Mitchell's through tropical 
Australia are of the greatest interest. Leichhardt returned to Sydney by sea after a 
land journey of three thou.sand miles, which extended over a period of fifteen months. 
Sturt's route was across the terrible desert situated on the border lines of the three 
colonies of New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland. This expedition was of 
little commercial value, and entailed frightful suffering upon Sturt and his party. 
Mitchell's expedition traversed a vast expanse of Queensland territory, and resulted in 
the discovery of the celebrated Barcoo or Victoria River. 

A year or two later, Leichhardt set out on a journey from the Condamine with the 
intention of making the Swan River in a line which should bisect the interior of the 
Continent at its greatest breadth. P>om the date of his setting forth until July, 1847, 
a period of over seven months, the expedition appears to have wandered aimlessly about, 
having been arrested by heavy rains, which induced a fever that attacked its members. In 
1848 Leichhardt, still determined to cross the Continent, started out with another party, and 
from that time till to-day no clue to his fate has ever been discovered. Leichhardt was 
lost, and the history of eastern exploration becomes largely the chronicle of the successive 
expeditions sent out to find any trace of the missing scientist. Vague rumours of a white 
man living among the blacks have obtained prominence at intervals, the white man being 
always identified as Classen, Leichhardt's brother-in-law, and a member of his party. One 
Hume stated that when employed in the construction of the overland telegraph line he had 
seen Classen, and learnt from him that Leichhardt was murdered during a mutiny in the 
camp, after which the party became disorganized and lost. Hume and two companions were 
fitted out to go in search of Classen, which they did, but only one man returned, Hume 
and the other having perished from thirst in Western Queensland. A search expedition 
under Hely was sent out in 1852, and another under M'Intyre in 1865, but in each 
case without result. 

The gradual widening of the area of exploration is really the history of settlement. 
In the footsteps of the early discoverers followed commercial enterprise and internal 
development. The first pioneers were the scjuatters, who, driven by drought, were forced 
to seek fresh pastures for their flocks, and being thus driven beyond the boundaries of 
actual occupation, enlarged the sphere of colonial enterprise, and paved the way for that 
rapid and extended settlement which has taken place within the last few years. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 

THE COAST-LINE. 

I "HE coast of New South Wales, though not deeply indented, has by no means a 
-*- monotonous outline, and from beginning to end it is of great interest and 

frequently of much beauty. A voyage in a coasting vessel along these six hundred 

miles of shore affords one long succession of varying effects, and requires only the 

beautiful weather which generally prevails to make the changing panorama delightful. 

The lover of the picturesque 

finds all he can desire in the 

constantly- recurring change 

from cliffs to sandy beaches 

and from promontories to 

bays, in the contrast between 

the vegetation on the rich 

flats with the more sombre 

hue of that which clothes 

the poorer lands on the 




TWOFOLD BAY. 



seaward mountain slopes, in the rapid succession of pretty little outports with their 
beacons and their ever active craft, and in the always varying outline of the dusky- 
verdured background as the hills rise and fall, advance and recede. There is plenty, 
too, to occupy the geologist in noting the change from granite to sandstone, in the 
irregular reddening of the latter by iron-stone deposits, in the visible inclination of the 
strata, in the dip of the coal seams, and in the occasional signs of eruptive action. 



ii6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

In sailing north we get the best chance of a close view, for there is a southerly 
current that sets strongly down the coast. Vessels bound south stand weU out to get 
its full benefit, but the coasters going northward hug the shore to escape it. It is 
owing to this that nearly all the vessels wrecked on the coast of New South Wales 
have come to grief when going north. 

Cape Howe is not imposing : a low sandy point rising steadily into a hill some 
three miles inland, the bare patches of glaring white sand being varied only in places 
by dark lines of stunted shrubs. From this point the boundary line between New South 
Wales and Victoria starts, running inland in a north-westerly direction, to a point on 
the Snowy River. The dividing line — which is quite an arbitrary one, and follows no 
natural features of the country — was in the first instance merely drawn on the map, and 
was planned to give all the south coast to Victoria, and all the east coast to New 
South Wales. The line has now been carefully marked out by surveyors, a part of 
their straight clearing through the forest being visible from the deck of the vessel. 

Gabo Island lies behind Cape Howe on the \'ictorian side, its ledges of granite 
being covered in the centre by sand-hills that have been tossed up by the Pacific in 
its angrier moods. On a ledge stands the light-house of dark red stone, throwing by 
night the long rays of its fixed white light, from a height of one hundred and eighty 
feet, over twenty miles of the darkly-heaving Pacific. But we are no sooner past the 
Victorian border than the coast rises in lines of bold, though not lofty, cliffs of dark 
red rocks. These run due north for eighteen or twenty miles, and then we see the 
open sweep of Disaster Bay, formed by the projection of the smoothly-descending 
boulders called Green Cape. Here also is a light-house, flashing its beams once a 
minute throughout the night. Near this point occurred the disastrous wreck of the 
Ly-ee-Moon. Forming a bold background rises Mount Imlay, inland about seventeen 
miles, and towering nearly three thousand feet above the sea-level. 

A short run of eight miles along a rocky coast, with rugged ranges behind it, 
brings us to the opening of Twofold Bay. The entrance is wide and free from danger ; 
a jutting headland divides the bay into two portions, the southern being the larger and 
the more sheltered. On the central point stands a wooden light-house painted white. 
Behind rise dark ranges, timbered to the summit, gloomy and impressive, that seem to 
shut the inlet out from the country behind. A long pier runs out into the bay, and 
is the landing-place for the township of Eden, which at present is little more than a 
scattered group of houses. This and a still more primitive town called Boyd, situated 
on the southern . shore, and named after one of the early commercial adventurers, were 
once regarded as the coming cities of this coast, and were thought to be destined to 
a glorious future ; but the whaling and other industries on which all this prosperity was 
to depend, proved " disappointing. So also was a subsequent expectation based on 
promising gold-fields ; as these declined, so did both towns. Houses and land were left 
deserted ; and now the townships, planned for a great destiny, suggest the idea of 
unrealized prophecy. But there is still some life and activity in Eden. The harljour is 
good, and the hilly country inland gives every indication of mineral wealth, so that 
the district may yet have a prosperous future, and redeem to some extent the all too 
sanguine hopes of those who expected more than it could give. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



"7 



Leaving the shelter of Twofold Hay, we ha^e a long line of dark and rocky coast 
to follow; clift-faces upon which the pure white lines of foam are ever breaking from 
the ceaseless swell of the restless ocean, and for ninety miles onwards there are always 
mountain ranges in 
view, and a rocky shore 
and occasional beaches. 
North of Haystack 
Point the coast is re- 
cessed in a wide open 
bay, into. the southern 
end of which the Pan- 
bula River discharges 
itself, forming an outlet 
from a lake of the same 
name, while into the 
northern end the 
Merimbula River simi- 
larly debouches from 
a corresponding lake. 
Both these points are 
visited by the small 
coasting steamers, for 
the country carries 
many dairy farms, 
though the area of rich 
land is limited. P\ir- 
ther north the mouth 
of the Bega makes a 
little port for the 
coasters that trade in 
farm produce from the 
rich pastures between 
t li e shore and t h e 
ranges that rise in lines 
of faint blue some 
twenty miles inland, the 
anchorage being under 
the shelter of Tathra 

Head. Subject to weather — for these ports are bar-harbours — vessels also visit the mouth 
of the Tuross River and the Moruya River, the local trade being in dairy produce, timber 
and return stores. But there is no opening of any considerable size throughout all these 
ninety miles ; rock\- cliffs, carved-out inledges, buttres.ses and caverns, varied by sandy 
coves at the feet of rounded hills of burnt and yellow grass, succeed one another all 
the way. But far behind these again rise the ever-present mountains, giving a bold 




POINT PERPENDICULAR, JERVIS BAY. 



,,8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

background to the landscape. They constantly vary in outline ; now receding in soft 
azure tint ; now near at hand like Mount Dromedary which, less than two miles off the 
coast, lifts its two dark humps into the sky ; and they are all well timbered. Could a 
landing be effected many a delightful ramble in umbrageous tree-fern gullies along the 
courses of murmuring streams might be indulged in by the coasting voyager. 

The ne.\t port is Bateman's Bay, about four miles wide at the opening, and tapering 
inland to the sandy bar that effectually closes the navigation to large vessels ; smaller 
craft go up to Nelligeri. This bay is really the estuary of the Clyde River ; it has 
some importance as the outlet for a busy district, including the gold-mining townships of 
Braidwood and Araluen. 

Here the ranges, which are luxuriantly beautiful, approach nearer the coast-line and 
add greatly to its grandeur. That high point with the breakers running far out indi- 
cates the proximity of the small and pretty harbour of UUadulla, which lies at the head of 
an inlet in a secure little bay only half-a-mile wide, and is also a shipping-place for dairy 
produce. The singular outline of Cook's Pigeon-house rises from a cluster of fine hills, 
and the gullies between them are rich with palms and tree-ferns. 

A great sweep of the coast to the east, past rich forest-lands, brings in view the 
bold cliffs of Cape St. George, looming out of the heaving waters. I3eyond its weather- 
graven profile, and on another rocky projection a mile or so farther on, stands the 
light-house, a short white tower ; this light, fixed two hundred and twenty feet high, is 
eagerly sought for in bad weather by the seaman ; its successive flashes of green, red 
and white being the surest guide the mariner has for nearly two hundred miles of coast 
between Sydney and Gabo. Past this promontory lies a passage two miles wide, leading 
into jervis Bay. The inlet is deep, and if an easterly wind blows, rough ; but in so 
capacious a harbour, with each headland overlapping a large area of good anchorage, 
plenty of sheltered water is to be found. There is very little sign of habitation on its 
mountain-fringed shores ; for commodious as is the harbour, there is but little agricultural 
land behind it, and its future depends entirely upon the development of its coal-fields. 

Jervis Bay affords one of those instances of which there are several on the 
Australian Coast — of a magnificent harbour apparently thrown away. There is no easy 
access to the interior, and a range of hills cuts it off from connection with the valley of 
the Upper Shoalhaven, most of the trade of which district reaches Sydney through the 
township of Marulan, on the Great Southern Railway. The produce of all the rich land 
along this southern coast finds its commercial outlets through poor, and sometimes 
dangerous harbours, often inaccessible in heavy weather, and always calling for the greatest 
caution on the part of the skilful navigators who conduct the maritime trade, and who, 
to their credit, have met with comparatively few casualties. The one good harbour along 
the coast has hitherto been useless ; though before many years are past it will probably 
be turned to account, for the South Coast Railway from Sydney is intended to reach 
as far as this bay, when it is expected that the port will be busy with the shipment of 
coal. The coal-seams have been traced to the south of the .Shoalhaven River, though 
no attempt has yet been made to open any mine in this locality. But the owners of 
coal-land lying at the back of Kiama look to Jervis Bay as their chief port of shipment 
as soon as the railway is constructed. The smallness of the coast harbours hitherto used 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



"9 



for the shipment of coal has been a great 
hindrance to the trade, because everything has 
to be carried in small steamers and trans- 
shipped at Sydney. At Jervis Bay the largest 
vessels might lie alongside in perfect shelter, 
and take their coal direct from cranes or staiths. 
It is a hundred and seventy miles nearer Mel- 
bourne than the port of Newcastle, from which 
the greater part of the coal is at present 
shipped, and an impression therefore prevails 
that this saving of distance would draw a large 
trade to this fine southern port if coal of the 
best quality can be furnished in combination 
with unequalled harbour facilities. Jervis Bay, 
therefore, which for the hundred years since 
the first founding of the colony, has been of 
little use except as a port of refuge, may 
before long show signs of great commercial 
activity. As to the quality of the coal in this 
district, it may be noted that there is a striking 
difference between the seams to the south of 
Sydney and those to the north. The latter is 
less bituminous, and more anthracitic in its 
character. It burns 
slowly, makes but little 
smoke, and requires a 
strong draught. It is 
much used for steamers 
that take long voyages, 
but it is not suitable 
for making coke or gas. 
.Sailing out of 
Jervis Bay, Point Per- 
pendicular, w h i c h 
guards the northern 
entrance, boldly con- 
fronts us. It is a steep, 
stern cliff, rising sheer 
from the water fully 
three hundred feet, and 
its storm-beaten sum- 
mit, bare of tree or 

shrub, throws a long harsh line against the sky. Leaving Point Perpendicular, the scenerj- 
still remains charming till the long stretches of flat sand are reached that mark the 





THE KIAMA BLOW-HOLE. 



120 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

mouth of the Shoalhaven River, where also there is a small shipping-port. Among these 
sands lie shallow lagoons, and a little beyond them highly fertile plains backed by the 
rugged coast-ranges. To the north, the shores rise again in dark lines of battlemented 
and turreted rocks — water-worn forms scored and scarred by the wash of centuries. 

The thriving little town of Kiama, resting on green leas swelling gently from the 
margin of its sheltered cove, is seen in passing ; and if there is anything like a swell, 
we may get a sight of that curious natural phenomenon called " The Blow-hole." This 
is a lateral tunnel at the water's edge, terminating in a perpendicular shaft, some soft 
deposit in the hard basaltic rock having been worn away. The swell dashes into the 
tunnel, and then bursts up in spray through the shaft. Beyond Point Bass is Shellhar- 
bour and the entrance to Lake Illawarra — its cultivated shores overlooked by the wildly- 
timbered ranges. A few miles north of the Lake is Wollongong, lying at the foot of 
the steep mountain slopes. Its little harbour has been secured by a mass of heavy 
masonry ; and round the basin, which has been cut out of the solid rock, are busy- 
wharves. The mountains fringing this part of the coast are all coal-bearing. A sharp eye 
will detect the mouths of tunnels running into the hills, and from those openings can be 
seen the coal-laden trucks speeding along the steep incline of the tram-way down to the 
wharves, where they discharge their loads into the waiting steamers. Wollongong is 
an active commercial centre and a place of great trade, second only to Newcastle 
among the coast towns of New South Wales. 

A few miles to the north is the mining town of Bulli, the shore in front of which 
does not seem a very promising place for the shipment of coal, being exposed to nearly 
all winds ; yet on its pier are coal-laden trucks, and it is only when a very unfavourable 
wind is blowing that vessels have to haul off to their moorings, or go out to sea. 
Two or three miles beyond Bulli is Coalcliff, with another mining township and a simi- 
larly exposed shipping-place. 

From, this point to Botany Bay only a few little sandy beaches break the mono- 
tonous line of cliffs. The hills decrease in height, and are bare and barren-looking. 
Between the moderately-elevated cliffs of Cape Banks and Cape Solander lies the 
entrance to that famous expanse which Cook called Botany Bay. To the south the 
tree-clad undulations run down to the water's edge, and there end in a shore of rocks 
and boulders ; to the west sweeps the long curve of a fine beach ; to the north, the 
land, flat at first, rises inland to hills whereon are scattered the white villas of the 
rapidly-spreading Sydney suburbs. Close to the north head of the Bay lies Bare Island, 
which has been selected as the site of the fortification to truard the entrance. 

From Botany Bay to Port Jackson are nine miles of picturesque coast-line, 
consisting alternately of bold sandstone cliffs and sandy bays, where in easterly gales the 
surf breaks with magnificent effect. Two of these inlets, Coogee and Bondi, are 
connected with the city by tram-way, and are favourite holiday resorts. Suburban villas 
may be seen capping all the rises. On the South Head stands the light-house, a white 
tower, perched three hundred feet high near the edge of jagged and precipitous cliffs ; 
at night the dazzling stream of its revolving electric light sweeps the horizon once a 
minute, and the reflection of its beam is said to be visible on a clear night for 
a distance of sixty miles. On the point of the headland is the inner light-house, a 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



121 



THE SEAL ROCK LIGHT-HOUSE. 



I 




prominent object with its red 
and white stripes, some ninety 
feet above the water ; round- 
ing this, the voyager may see unfolding be- 
fore his eyes the famous Harbour of Port 
Jackson, the gate of Sydney, the great com- 
mercial centre of the South Pacific. 

Sailing out again under the vertical cliffs 
of the North Head, and keeping northwards 
past alternate rocks and sandy beaches for 
sixteen miles, we round the high cone of 
Barren joey Head, where an entrance two 
miles wide leads into Broken Bay, the estuary of the 
picturesque Hawkesbury River, discovered by Governor 
Phillip in 1789, during one of his excursions in search 
of better land for cultivation than that found on the 
shores of Port Jackson. The Hawkesbury branches out 
into long arms of deep water, lying very dark and still, 
like small fiords, overshadowed by cliffs that rise often 
to five and six hundred feet in height. But there is 
wonderful variety in this beautiful inlet, the shores being 
sometimes beaches of a deep-red or reddish-brown colour, which look very bright when set 
off by the dark-green foliage of the background. There are not many places in the 



122 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

world that can rival the mouth of the Hawkesbur}^ River for majestic scenery, and the 
stream is well named, in the language of an Australian poet, the Rhine of the South. 

North of this estuary the shore is rocky and weather-worn, with barren-looking hills 
beyond ; then come the smooth flat wastes of sand, varied by the shining expanses of 
the Tuggerah and Macquarie Lakes, which are visible from the bridge of a passing 
vessel. Behind these rise ranges fledged to their summits with the dusky-foliaged euca- 
lypts which seem so strange to eyes accustomed to the bright and lush greens of 
Enn-land's forest-trees. Hills of blown sand line all the shore, except where the bluff^s of 
Red Head vary the monotony, and here the tug-boats are generally to be seen waiting 
to tow vessels into the Newcastle Harbour; at night the flash of a blue light indicates 
their whereabouts. The view is picturesque as we double Nobby's, once a rocky islet, but 
now joined by a long breakwater to the city itself, which rises tier on tier with rows 
of houses on a rounded hill. At the foot of the city, at the water's edge, and on the 
shore of Bullock Island, are constructed the steam-cranes and the loading-shoots that fill 
with coal the great fleet of vessels that make of Newcastle a busy port. The sea is 
often wild and dangerous of? this Nobby's Head, and many a vessel has gone ashore 
when striving to cross the bar, made tumultuous by easterly gales and a six-knot 
current. That green buoy a cable's length off shows where the ill-fated Cawarra went 
down wMth passengers and crew ; being swept away by the rolling breakers one fearful 
night, nearly thirty years ago. Winding away inland is the line of the Hunter River 
with its many arms and sandy islands. 

From Newcastle Harbour for twenty miles the coast is smooth, bare and mono- 
tonous. The long rollers foam against a sandy beach, which rises into two small hills 
tipped with straggling scrub, till we come to Morna Point with its cliffs and hills of sand- 
stone. Then round the light-house on the Point, and into Port Stephens ; a good harbour, 
but with low, and in some places, swampy shores in no way inviting to the eye. 
Much of the harbour consists of banks and shoals, which at ebb-tide are left uncovered, 
and present a wide and somewhat dismal waste of glistening sand, but inland there are 
fine wooded ranges. Sailing out of Port Stephens a pleasing contrast is presented by 
the bold hills that stand like sentinels on either side of the entrance ; each is from 
five to seven hundred feet in height, and slopes steeply down to the high cliffs which 
descend sheer to the breakers below. 

The shore now seems tamer than it did before, showing only bare white hills of 
sand for twenty miles, though off the coast there are crowds of rocks and shoals and 
sunken ledges kept white with the hissing breakers. The next feature of interest is 
Sugarloaf Point, where vessels are obliged to keep out a little from land to shun the 
Seal Rocks and their attendant dangers. Beyond the scrub-covered hummocks of the 
Point there stretches a low and level coast densely covered with scrub, but pleasantly 
diversified by the lagoons called Myall Lake, Smith Lake and Wallis Lake. Isolated 
peaks covered with timber rise in succession a few miles inland ; and this scenery 
continues with monotonous persistency to Cape Hawke and the bare sand-hills that 
mark the entrance to the Manning River ; from thence the same wide-spreading flats 
and sandy hills form the coast-line till the light-house of Crowdy Head is reached, 
where navigation is endangered by the breakers and a broad patch of the Mermaid Reef. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



123 



The rugged nakedness of the hills that form Indian Head is only a little relief, and 
behind the long scrub-covered flats are lagoons, the entrance to which is the bar-locked 
inlet of Camden Haven. For some distance north there is still the same monotony ; a 
sharply- defined shore 
of low-lying rocks, with 
slightly undulating 
land behind them, 
covered with a dense 
unvarying scrub, till 
passing the broad la- 
goon called Lake Innes 
and rounding the low 
shelving rocks called 
Tacking Point, the 
snow-white light-house 
may be seen, backed 
by dark purple masses 
of verdure-covered hills 
which here and there 
run down to the water's 
edge. 

Beyond this lies 
Port Macquarie, over 
the broad bar of which 
the rollers break with 
ever - recurring roar, 
leaving a narrow and 
dangerous channel by which the 
steamers have access to the navigation of the 
Hastings River. The monotonous scrub- 
covered flats re-appear ; but there is a varia- 
tion where the rounded peaks of the Saddle 
Hills lift their timbered slopes from the very 
edge of the water. This timber-covered land, 
fronted by a low and rocky shore, is broken 

by the broad peaks of Smoky Cape. Further on is Trial Bay, where a long sandy spit 
divides the sea from the Macleay River. This ridge is six or seven miles long, thrown 
up by the waves and obstructing the entrance to the river, which finds its way into 
the sea far to the north of its original embouchure. 

Thence scrub-covered plains continue, with occasional ranges such as the Bellinger 
Peaks and Triple Peaks ; lines of bluffs, and then low sandy shores ; rolling sand-hills 
and swampy lands succeed each other, till the woody ranges that have so long been 
faint blue lines in the distance approach the coast and show their bold though not 
lofty outlines. At Evans Head the cliffs become high, and on the ranges that rise 




124 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



steeply from their edge are a few pandamis palms lifting up their picturesque heads 
above the general level of banksias and dwarf gum-trees. 

The mouth of the Clarence River lies between low blufTs covered with storm-riven 
bushes, and that fine stream, for seventy miles above its mouth, continues half a mile 
broad with deep and easily navigable waters. The number of vessels visiting the port 

indicates the richness 
and prosperity of the 
surrounding district, 
which is largely de- 
pendent on the cultiva- 
tion of sugar. South 
of the Clarence the 
attempts to grow sugar 
have been a failure. 

Farther north is 
the entrance to another 
river — the Richmond. 
Its lontr stretches of 
wet sands and sad- 
coloured swamps are 
not inviting ; and the 
line of breakers sweep- 
ing in a curve a little 
way from the coast 
shows where the for- 
midable bar is situated, 
and explains the small- 
ness of the traffic. 
But if the immediate 
shore is low and un- 
interesting, it is a constant pleasure to watch the gradual unfolding of new effects on those 
inland mountains, which by degrees approach the coast, terminating at length in the bold 
promontory of Cape Byron, whose precipices rise high up to its wooded crest, towering 
above the surrounding shores so as to give the sailor warning of the reefs and foam- 
clad dangers that skirt its base. As our Australian poet, Brunton Stephens, writes : — 

The grandeur of the lone old promontory ; 

The distant bourne of hills in purple guise, 
Athrob with soft enchantment ; high in glory 

The peak of Warning bosomed in the skies ! 

North of the Richmond sandy beaches extend for many miles with plains behind, 
the coast-ranges forming a background, the peaks called the Twins being noticeable 
landmarks. Then comes a wide area, where the dashing of breakers and the constant 
hiss of the subsiding foam mark the spot where Cook's ship more than a century ago 
nearly came to grief. No little skill and care is requisite to steer safely through these 




GRANITE ROCKS, MOUNT KOSCIUSKO. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



125 



successive reefs ; and 
it is easy to under- 
stand why Cook gave 
the name of Point 
Danger to that shel- 
ving cape beyond the 
breakers. Castingf a 
glance inland we see 
a range of high 
mountains — the Mac- 
pherson Range — with 
blue-tinted peaks 
rising nearly four 
thousand feet into the 
sky; it is this range, 
sweeping down to the 
plain, that forms the 
headland of the 
Point. After having 
gradually descended 
to the sea-level, it 
runs under water a 
long way out to sea, 
forming the treacher- 
ous Danger Reefs. 
Once safely round 
Point Danger, the 
coast of New South 
Wales is left behind, 
and that of Queens- 
land begins ; the bold 
and rugged Macpher- 
son Range, a lateral 

spur of the Big Divide, running almost at right angles to the main chain and termina- 
ting on the coast, forms part of the northern boundary-line of the former colony. 




VVENTWORTH FALLS, BLUE MOUNTAINS. 



Mountains. 
The mountains of Australia are not remarkable for altitude, being all below the 
perpetual snow-line; and they have no active volcano to enhance their interest. In some 
far distant ages their height may have been proportionate to their gigantic bulk, and in 
some dim future they may possess a history and a romance as thrilling or inspiring as 
those lingering like familiar spirits about every crag, peak and ravine of Europe and of 
Asia. A tremendous geological age, and an absolute babyhood of human interest and 
effort, are characteristic of Australian mountains, as of everything else on Austral earth. 



, ,6 A UHTHALASM ILL (fSTHA TH/J, 

ihc i\T%K itrirad vitm (A ihe Au«traliaii a^fdilUrra iM*m^ «"> mA a am^/an/umAy f am m- 
\inn'AtM <aith «rl<;vat(on, l/ut % \mxt'w.t i4 im:v4M hundred miU» m hngik httwttm im> 
oeeskn% Ka*t ami wtr«t %n the wat«rr» from it» rkl^e; Umsm; to tJi« Pacific Oeeaflu flmw; 
tn tbi; Indian. Th^; mcrn oi th« inrmttr di«char;^e upon the coast, wlule tliose of dbe 
oth<;r wandf;r «luKf^i<»hly, and in no j^rcat y»\\tnw% acutm tim iffrtat pbim of the intcnor. 
wh<rrir th«ry join oihrrr rivers, which in turn (low on, still in a «outlvwectefly d&cctioa, 
diminishing; in numt>«:r a<» they pUKtxd, like the gathered thread* of a «kdn« until tlicy 
meet the Murray, which diwchar^^eK into Lake Alexandrina, The most cfaaractemtically 
mountainous part of . Australia lies in its sout}w:astem comer, for here » the Highest 
point, here is the larf^cst area of elevated land, and from this part runs to the north 
tliL' l)ivi(lin)( Kan)(e of Ivastern Australia, and also the great lateral spur to the west 
which forms the Dividing Kange of Victoria, 

The first point of im(>ortancc in the New South Wales portion of the Australian 
Alps is the Pilot, rising over six thousand feet above the level of the sea, the next in 
order —the Kam Head of the early navigators — having an additional eight hundred feet ; 
but these |>eaks are totally eclipsed by the group in the Central Alps known as the 
Kosciusko group, which is the most Alpine in its character in the entire range. Of 
these, Kosciusko — so named by Count Strzlecki in memory of his distinguished countrjman. 
the hero of Poland — was long thought to be the highest point in the Australian Conti- 
nent, Inil I)r, von Lcndcnfeld has shown Mount Townsend to have a superior elevation 
of eighty-five feet, A thorough examination of these peaks was conducted by Mr. 
Hetts, of the New South Wales Survey Department, and they are now amongst the 
best known of the Australian mountains. 

There ■ is no sharpness or abruptness in the form of Mount Kosciusko. An 
Australian driver would take his coach and four to its topmost peak and drive about 
the huge stone cairn, which bears the inscription of many visitors. Nor is great 
height shown by a wonderfully expansive view, Kosciusko fs a hummock of a great 
table-land, not a cone or peak springing from a plain. A rugged series of mountain 
heads rise on every side. From five thousand to si,\ thousand five hundred feet is 
their average height, and the monarch of all claims the altitude of seven thousand 
three hundred and fifty one feet. Throughout the winter months the snow lies deep 
on Kosciusko, and the wild cattle are down in the valleys. It is unbroken solitude, 
the wliite peace of Nature, beneath which grow slowly the rare and beautiful wild- 
plants, to l)ud wllii the melting of the snow in the spring-time and to blossom through 
lilt: long anil by no means oppressive summer. There is snow in some sunless crannies 
of that mountain head which no December melts, and every June freezes. But over the 
greater breadth of his summit, gray rock with black earth appears, bearing from November 
to January a luxuriant carpet of bloom — flowers strange to the dwellers in lower lands, 
representatives of the lily and ranunculus and aster tribes, with heath-like plants not more 
than six inches high, but fragrant and dense, A little lower on the eastern slope is the 
tiny Lake Albina, from which starts the Snowy River, most impetuous and direct in its 
course of all Australian streams, and twenty miles farther on, and two thousand feet lower, 
is a main source of the Murray in the Tooma River, But this corner of the colony abounds 
in water-courses, a great number of streams taking their rise in these Alpine solitudes. 



TOPOGKA/'ifv or Nnw sour// wales. 



1*7 





128 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Northward from its starting-point in the Alps, and in its axis generally parallel with the 
coast, runs this great range. It changes its name as many of our Australian rivers change 
their names, the continuity not being recognized by the first discoverers. At Kosciusko it 
is called the Muniong Chain, and this range runs parallel to the Gourock Spur, with 
Jindulian, its highest point, four thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea. 
Around the head-waters of the Murrumbidgee, the Great Divide and its lateral spurs 
are known as the Monaro and Murrumbidgee Ranges. The former reaches its greatest 
elevation at the head of the Kybean River, and the latter culminates in Marragural, 
nearly seven thousand feet. Continuing northward, the Cullarin Range, with its 
Mundoonen Peak, leads on to the minor spurs known as the Hunter, Mittagong and 
Macquarie Ranges, and the cordillera east of Sydney is called the Blue Mountains. 
Here are many notable points, highest of which is Mount Beemarang, over four thou- 
sand feet, which altitude is nearly attained by Mount- Clarence in this same division of 
the Great Divide. The average elevation of the main chain at this part is three thou- 
sand three hundred feet, and the Blue Mountains proper extend from the thirty-fourth 
parallel of latitude northward to the Liverpool Range. At Monaro the height is much 
less than on the principal part of the Muniong Range, yet it is sufficient to produce a 
long and rigorous winter, even in the towns that nestle in the valleys, or on the slopes 
of the hills. But north of Monaro there is a decided drop. The plateau of the main 
range is here comparatively narrow ; th::re are no towering peaks, no stupendous crags 
or lofty isolated summits. The backbone is less marked, and otherwise so level and 
diversified in character as almost to escape recognition. In the latitude of Goulburn the 
plateau widens out, but the general height is not more than two thousand feet ; and on 
to the northward it grows still more elevated and rugged. 

At the Blue Mountains — " The Mountains " par excellence to the people of Sydney — 
the backbone asserts itself and takes bold shape again. The grim escarpment of the 
seaward face of this section of the Big Divide is associated with all the history, trials 
and efforts of the early Australian colonists. Governor Phillip saw it in his first journey 
inland ; looked out towards it from his Rose Hill farm and his settlement on Toon- 
gabbie and Castle Hill. The bold blue bastion guarded all the secret of the inner land 
through the first twenty years of Australian history. A road painfully made by convict 
labour, and for years painfully traversed, opened the far west to commerce, but only 
with the railway did the beauties and pleasures and glories of the mountains become 
accessible to the multitudes of the city. They are all within an easy journey now. 
Without serious effort or hardship or privation of any kind, the tourist of to-day may 
stand on the precise spot where, after much trial and endurance, the gallant little band 
of first explorers stood ; may pass by the graves of the soldiers who kept the first 
camp at Blackheath ; may look at the marvel of Govett's Leap ; at the Grose and 
Kanimbula Valleys ; at the multitude of waterfalls ; and — softest and perhaps loveliest 
picture of all — at the plains and the river below Lapstone Hill. 

But he who would really know the mountains, must give weeks and months to them ; 
must not only see the mysteries and beauties of the everlasting gulfs, the falling waters, 
the distant forest-carpet and the lace-like fringe of ferns and flowers, but he must let the 
majestic colouring and clothing of the sunset sink into his being. He must watch while 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



129 




riMM 




lili. KATOOMBA FALLS AND 
THE THREE SISTERS. 



Nature weaves the robes of 
imperial purple and royal gold ; 
while down in the gorges the 
pale gray mists and the deep 
blue shadows are prepared ; 
while every salient point, ever)' 
unshadowed ridge is flooded 
with fiery rays ; while the bare 
crags gleam and glow in the 
lambent flame of the sunset as 
if in process of transmutation, 
and the gnarled and stunted 
trees of the summit stand out 
in weird and fantastic outline 
in the burning spectral light 
The tourist who starts from 
Sydney to study the scener>' 
of the Blue Mountains travels 
through some of the most charming country in New South Wales, where the original 
wildness of the bush has been subdued, and the landscape looks almost English in its 



I30 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

character. Thirty miles from Sydney is the Nepean, the water-level of which is at this 
point not more than eighty feet above the high-tide mark of Port Jackson. Across 
the river lies a short plain backed by a steep, densely-timbered slope of sandstone rocks. 
This is the beginning of the Blue Mountains. The railway climbs the escarpment by 
a zig-zag, achieving in this way an ascent of nearly a thousand feet. The traveller as 
he rises gets a view of a lovely landscape — a rich plain with a river sauntering through 
it ; enclosed farms with their variegated patches of different crops ; settlers' homes 
scattered irregularly about ; beyond, the half-cleared paddocks, mostly devoted to cattle- 
grazing ; and in the distance the white houses of the elevated suburbs of Sydney, and 
the wreathed smoke from the many steamers passing up and down the coast. 

Once on the top of the Zig-zag the traveller is' at the beginning of a great plateau 
of sandstone rock. The material of which it is composed is believed to be the detritus 
of an older rock deposited here long after the coal-seams had been laid in their beds. 
The general opinion is that this sand was deposited in water, but the Rev. J. E. 
Tenison-Woods has urged strong reasons in favour of its all being wind-blown. In any 
case, it was submerged, and covered with the same Wainamatta shale that overspreads 
the Sydney Plains. It was then re-lifted and mostly denuded of its shale covering, which 
remains in only one or two places to tell the tale. This sandstone has been deeply 
furrowed, so that it now consists of ridges and gorges. Here and there the trap-rock 
has burst through, as at Mount Tomah, Mount Hay, Mount King George and Mount 
Wilson, and the generally sterile soil is suddenly exchanged for rich land densely 
covered with forest-trees, giant ferns, and a thick jungle of matted vines and creepers. 
Across these mountains the line taken by the road, and followed by the railway line, 
keeps to the ridge that separates the valleys of the Grose on the north side, and the 
Cox on the south. This ridge is very circuitous, and rises regularly all the way to 
Blackheath. On either side are to be seen lateral spurs and the valleys between them, 
the scenery having some variety, but at the same time preserving a general sameness. 
The road and railway line cross and re-cross each other, for the ridge is in places very 
narrow, and nowhere does it attain any considerable breadth. These mountains are now 
becoming the great sanatorium of Sydney. The railroad rises from the plains con- 
tinuously till an elevation of three thousand eight hundred feet is reached, and there 
are stations every few miles. This gives a special value to these mountains as a health- 
resort, because invalids can choose their elevation to suit their taste or their complaint. 

At Wentworth begins the great waterfall country, for here the valleys are deeper, 
and the hill-sides are more abrupt. In dry weather the quantity of water falling over 
the rock-edges dwindles to small proportions, as the gathering-ground is so small. But 
though the views are mostly named from the falls, the real grandeur of the scenery lies 
in the valleys, where depth and distance deceive from their very magnitude, and where 
the sombre hue of the gum-forests, far down below and beyond, contrasts with the 
bright colour of the cliffs reddened with iron-stone stains. " The Great Falls," which bear 
appropriately the name of that famed Australian who was among the first to cross their 
water-shed, make a descent in three successive cascades of a thousand feet, having at 
their base a tall point, which from above seems but a bank of moss half-hidden by the 
mist of the broken water. At Katoomba there is one great fall, a sheer drop of two 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, 



I'? I 




hundred feet over the edge of 
the cliff ; but perhaps there is 
more beauty in the lesser cas- 
cades, of which there are many 
within a mile of Katoomba, on 
the northern edge of the Kanim- 
bula Valley. Ten miles farther 
on, and southward from Black- 
heath, is a valley without a 
waterfall, but with a beauty 
peculiarly its own. It is called 
the Mermaid's Cave — a channel 
or cranny in a great gray rock, 
that almost divides the vale. 
All above is a rugged, coarse, 
common-place Australian gully, all below is soft, luxurious beauty. This is the rest and 
the peace of the mountains. The grandeur, the profundity of gloom, the Titanic force 
and passion must be sought in another place, and in none better, perhaps, than in the 
Valley of the Grose, at Govett's Leap. 

A mile to the northward of Blackheath Station this greatest marvel of the moun- 
tains is hidden, unperceived from the railway-track by reason of the mountainous gum- 



'32 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



forest. The road to the Leap lies to the right of the line, falling by an easy descent ; 
and the first promise of wonderland is given by the characteristic blue of the hills 
beyond the huge chasm, seen occasionally through the trees. But the veil is drawn 
abruptly when the last turn is made, and there is nothing between the spectator and 
the vastness of the gorge. From a ledge of gray rock, thinly robed with a few wind- 
tortured trees and scrub, the view is down into a gulf whose floor, though clothed with 
a great forest, undulates like the face of a rolling, but unbroken sea. The tree-tops are 
twelve hundred feet below. The Grose River runs beneath, but it is not heard, and 
only occasionally is there a glimpse of the tall tree-ferns upon its banks, or a flash of 
its silver current, where, after heavy rains, its flood-tide rush has torn a broader gap 
through the leaves. Out into the gulf runs a little peninsula whose extreme point bears 
the name of " The Pulpit," and from " The Pulpit's " ledge one may look down into 
the abyss, or glancing across to the right, may see the precipice that bears the name 
of Govett's Leap, so called after the surveyor who "first discovered it. The water is 
collected and held in a broad morass at the head of a little gully, and filtering through 
gathers in a long shallow basin and overflows its edge, which is the lip of the gorge. 
In summer weather it is but a fairy fall, an undine maiden's bridal wreath, a thin 

veil of silvery spray 
and transparent water 
shimmering upon the 
surface of the brown 
rock, in every nook 
and cranny of which 
shine wet fern-leaves 
of a bright yet tender 
green. It drops five 
hundred and twenty 
feet, breaks on a pro- 
trudinsj ledye at the 
cliff^'s foot, and loses 
itself in a bank of 
ferns on the edge of 
the forest. These 
different waterfalls — 
though each with spe- 
cial characteristics of 
its own — have general 
features common to 
them all, and the lover 
of Nature who lingers long enough at any one may saturate himself with all the inspi- 
ration which this bold and beautiful plateau can give. There is something sacred and 
secret about all great mountains which impresses men with the sense of their own 
littleness, and this huge rocky mass, lying as it does in sight of a great and populous 
city, is no incompetent interpreter of the lessons that Nature has to teach to Man. 




5*^" 



MOUNT WINGEN. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



^11 



I'our miles beyontl Blackheath is Mount Victoria, close to which is Mount Piddington, 
a favourite point of view with tourists. The last and some of the fairest of the water- 
falls arc about Mount Victoria, and by an easy drive beyond the peak on the northern 
side of the line Mount York is reached, down whose western face Blaxland, Wentworth 
and Lawson descended on their first journey. The Lithgow Valley is the western limit 




MOUNT LINDSAY, IN THE MACPHERSON kANoh. 



of the Blue Mountains proper, but the great ridge continues its northward course, the 
branch railroad to Mudgee skirting it at some little distance inland. At Capertee the 
view seaward is down a gorge as deep as that of the Grose, the great cavity here 
having long ago received the name of " The Gulf." At the head of the Goulburn 
River, the principal tributary of the Hunter, the range is at its farthest point from the 
sea. It then trends eastward, and becomes known as the Liverpool Range, first sighted 
by Oxley, whose name has been given to its highest peak, four thousand five hundred 
feet above the level of the sea. At the foot of this range, near the township of Scone, 
is the singular phenomenon of a mountain on fire. It is the one burning mountain of 
the Continent, but its fires are not volcanic. The nether forces beneath Australia do not 
show upon the surface, and earthquake shocks are rarely felt. Wingen is not a volcano, 
but a mountain in whose face a coal seam has become ignited, and the flames, eating 
into the hill, have followed the seam. Mounds of scoricB lie about its mouth, and 
sulphurous dust is in places solidified, or formed into crystals. 



134 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Through the western gorges of the Liverpool Range, Allan Cunningham, botanist 
and explorer, found the road northward which he named the Pandora Pass. The railway 
from Newcastle to the north country climbs the mountains here, making a bold sweep 
up their face and, piercing the ridge with a tunnel, coming out on the Liverpool Plains. 
From this point the range runs north, forming a fairly broad plateau, over large areas 
of which the soil is rich with the decomposition of the intrusive trap-rock, and thus is 
reached the New England Range, forming the vast northern table-land. The average 
elevation of this portion of the Great Divide is three thousand five hundred feet, and 
its highest point, the renowned Ben Lomond, looks down from an altitude of five 
thousand feet. A lateral spur is the Macpherson Range, which runs east to Point 
Danger and culminates in Mount Lindsay, with a height of seven hundred feet above 
that of Ben Lomond in the main range. This great table-land to the north of the 
Liverpool mountain chain grows wheat in abundance, and supports a numerous and 
increasing population, who find health and wealth on its well-watered, breezy surface. 
Two hundred miles it stretches, not without patches of romantic beauty and glimpses of 
grandeur in mountain and in valley. On its seaward slopes there is wildness enough, 
as those settlers discovered who sought a more direct outlet to the sea than that 
through Newcastle. 

Some of the grandest mountains are set in the extreme north-eastern corner of the 
colony. They are very little known, and many of them may never have been ascended ; 
but from the tropical fringe of the sugar-lands, or the bold headland of Point Danger, 
to the magnificent height of Mount Lindsay, they are beautiful in form and in foliage 
beyond all other hills of the colony. Mount Lindsay, with its castellated summit, may 
well be described as the giant warder of our northern frontier. Seen from the heights 
above Casino, or from the great table-land, his grim front rises through the forests a 
sheer crag, a thousand feet in height, robed with foliage, and with his wet rocky 
helmet flashing jewel-like in the sun. 

The cradles of some of the greatest Australian waters are about these northern 
mountains. Here spring brooks which, later on, combine with others to form the great 
Darling. Westward they all flow from the mountain slopes ; and on what a long and 
marvellous journey they go — out on to the broad western plains, down the tortuous 
courses of the Darling and the Murray till they find the sea on the southern coast ! 
And the waters of the eastern slopes, what will they discover ? They see such abrupt 
contrasts, such varieties of vegetation, as no other Australian waters are privileged to 
see. Their birthplace is in the highlands, amongst shrubs of poor and wintry growth ; 
but in a few miles they come down to warm and fertile dales, through which they 
gleam and sparkle on their journey to the sea, putting a fringe about the robe of the 
Big Divide which in its richness is unapproached by any other forest of the Continent. 
The greatest breadth of this tropical verdure, which bears the prosaic and misleading 
name of the Big Scrub, spreads itself about those feet of the mountains which come 
down to the sea by the little towns of the Richmond River. 

At Mount Lindsay ends the New South Wales portion of the mountain chain. The 
Cordillera, running generally parallel with the direction of the coast, comprises either in 
its principal range, or in its lateral spurs, all the great mountains, the water-gathering or 



k 




THE WATERFATX AT GOVETT S LKAT. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 135 

water-dividing grounds of the colony. Sometimes high, bold, and wild — a serrated or 
razor-backed divide ; at others a broad plateau, affording in semi-tropical latitudes the 
conditions of the temperate zone ; rugged and desolate over many miles, showing only 
the l:)arren sandstone, and that poorly fertilized by the decay of its own meagre vegeta- 
tion, with here and there large fertile patches of the decomposed trap-rock which mark 
the old volcanic overflows. 

The continuity of the table-land of New South Wales is broken by the Hunter 
River, which geographically divides it into a northern and a southern portion. The 
northern stretches from the Liverpool Range to the border, and far into Queensland. 
Its eastern edge is a mountain chain, and it approaches the coast to within thirty-five 
miles, reaching in some places a height of three thousand six hundred feet above the 
sea-level ; its average elevation, however, does not exceed two thousand five hundred feet. 
Its declivity thence to the sea is steep and rugged, but it slopes gradually to the west 
The corresponding southern table-land begins with the mountains skirting the head of the 
Goulburn, and extends in a southerly direction into the colony of Victoria. It is remark- 
ably similar to the northern plateau, though its elevation is somewhat less, not exceeding 
an average of two thousand two hundred feet. West of these elevated portions of the 
colony stretch the great plains of the interior, with a slope so insignificant as to 
be insufficient for carrying off the water deposited on their surface by the heavy rains, 
and these vast tracts of level land constitute nearly half of the entire colony. 

The coast-ranges occupy an intermediate position between the great cordillera and 
the Pacific Ocean, and are generally minor ranges running parallel to the tables of the 
Divide. Mount Seaview is the only peak of these attaining a remarkable altitude, rising 
six thousand feet, giving birth to the Hastings River, and looking right out to the 
Pacific across sixty miles of varied country. Other prominent mountains of these coast- 
ranges are Mount Coolungubbera, over three thousand seven hundred feet high, and 
Mount Budawang, three thousand eight hundred feet, which are noted peaks of the 
southern portion of this mountainous parallel to the Great Divide. Besides these coast- 
spurs a number of isolated peaks stud the coast-line and the plains of the inland 
country. Some of the most conspicuous of these points have been already described in 
the chapter on the coast scenery of New South Wales, and although mountains of this 
character occur in several parts of the colony, they do not materially affect its geo- 
graphical features. 

In the far west there is no continuous mountain range, but there are groups 
remarkable if only by reason of their isolation. Such are the Grey and Stanley or 
Barrier Ranges, which attain in some of their peaks a height of two thousand feet, 
terrible memorials of hideous droughts, bearing nothing but scrub and ^pinifex, and 
inhabited only by wild dogs and a few carrion birds. A rare wet season may bring 
them a temporary coat of green, and start salt and cotton bush about their slopes to 
produce crops of drought-withstanding food. And in their valleys a few adventurous 
diggers may be busy ; but these sultry dales are only the skirts or outposts of the great 
inner land of wildness, vastness, and awe-inspiring solitude. Between these western hills 
and the foot of the cordillera lies that great plain-country of the colony through the 
heart of which the Darling winds its tortuous way. There are no hills — scarcely undula- 



136 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



tions — and only the beds of the water-courses indicate the fall of the land. In many 
parts the soil is rich, but the rainfall is so precarious that a carpet of green is the 
exception and not the rule, the vegetation being principally salt-bush. Kendall, in some 
graphic verses, has well described the summer aspect of these arid stretches of sun- 
scorched soil : — 

Swarthy wastelands, wide and woodless, glittering miles and miles away. 
Where the south wind seldom wanders, and the winters will not stay ; 
Lurid wastelands, pent in silence thick with hot and thirsty sighs, 
Where the scanty thorn-leaves twinkle with their haggard hopeless eyes ; 
Furnaced wastelands, lumched with hillocks like to stony billows rolled 
Where the naked flats lie swirling, like a sea of darkened gold ; 
Burning wastelands, glancing upward with a weird and vacant stare, 
Where the languid heavens quiver o'er red depths of stirless air ! 





SANDSTONE PEAKS OF THE FAR WEST. 



Rivers. 

The river system of New South 
Wales divides itself naturally into two 
parts, namely, the eastern and western 
flowing waters. All the rivers take 
their rise in some part of the great 
Cordillera range, which runs roughly 
parallel with the coast, though at a 
distance varying from thirty to one 
hundred and fifty miles. Throughout 
its whole length this range constitutes 
the Big Divide, the water falling on 
its eastern slope flowing to the sea, and that on the western side going into the Murray. 
The division of the colony thus made is very unequal in area, three-fourths of it lying 
to the west of the main range. The whole of the surplus rainfall on the inland area 
drains into the Murray at Wentworth, the principal tributaries of this main artery being 



A SANDSTONE TABLE-LAND. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



^il 



the Upper Murray, the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan and the Darling. The last-named 
has some of its sources in Queensland, and the whole basin thus drained is estimated 
at one hundred and ninety-eight thousand square miles. The area is vast enough to fill 





I- 1* 





NOTHING I.\ 



_N . 1 I \ (. i.)L A 1 ;. 



a Mississippi or an Amazon, and yet so uncertain and occasionally so scanty is the rain-fall, 
and so great is the ground-soakage, that the Murray at its outlet into Lake Alexandrina 
is not really a large river. Careful calculations have shewn that there is carried to the 
sea only a small fraction of the rain-fall ; the rest soaks into the soil, and when in 
excess finds its way to the coast by under-ground channels. These subterranean supplies 
are now being tapped with the best results. 

The Murray, which is the southernmost of the western rivers of New South Wales, 
takes its rise near Mount Kosciusko in the Muniong Range of the Australian Alps, and 
from the source of its tributary, the Indi, to Ghowella below the junction of the Darling 
it forms the boundary of New South Wales. It is occasionally navigable as far as 
Albury, when the river is in flood from heavy rains or the melting of the snow on the 
Alps ; but practically Echuca is the head of navigation. This river was first opened 
to commerce by Captain Cadell, who tempted by a bonus offered by the South 
Australian Government built the Lady Aiigusta in Sydney, navigated her round the 
coast, took her over the dangerous bar at the mouth, and ascended the river as far as 
Swan Hill, where the Victorian stream, the Marraboor, flows into the Murray. 

The Murrumbidgee, the next river to the north, also takes its rise in the Australian 
Alps, not very far from the source of the Murray, and it drains the greater part of the 
north-lying slopes of that mountain mass. The various streams, which flow north for a 
time, turn to the west and unite to form the Murrumbidgee, which then runs westerly 
till it joins the Lachlan at Nap Nap. Its drainage area is estimated at five and twenty 
thousand square ' miles. It is occasionally navigable as far as Gundagai, but steamers 
seldom go beyond Wagga Wagga, and the water-transit is now largely superseded by 
the railway. Next, in order among the northern rivers is the Lachlan, its principal 



138 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

sources being in the ranges between Goulburn and Bathurst. This stream is hardly at 
all navigable, but it drains a basin of twenty-seven thousand square miles. 

The Darling drains the western rain-fall from Bathurst to the northern boundary of 
the colony. Its principal tributaries — the Bogan, the Macquarie and the Castlereagh — run 
for a considerable distance north-west, and this greatly puzzled the early explorers, who 
thought they had found the sources of some river that would empty itself on the 
northern coast, and it was no little disappointment to find that all these streams 
converged into the channel of the Darling, running to the south-west. The general 
system of the western water-shed, therefore, roughly resembles the shape of an outspread 
hand, the wrist being the outlet and the fingers the great feeders. All these branches 
have picturesque reaches at the beginning, where they are falling from the hills ; but 
once out upon the plains they have but few tributaries, and they zig-zag slowly across 
the level country, their course being generally marked by a thin fringe of stunted gum- 
trees. They are welcome enough to the thirsty traveller, and the water-frontages are 
highly prized by stock-owners, but they present little to charm an artist's eye. When the 
waters are up there is something picturesque in the steam-boats pufiing along through 
the gum-tree groves with tremendous noise and stir ; by day darkening the soft blue of 
the sky with smoke, and by night belching forth meteoric showers of sparks from their 
funnels, and throwing long rays from their powerful lamps into the weird and silent 
darkness of the forest that fringes the river's banks. Sometimes the waters are high 
enough for these steamers to disregard the channel and, cutting off the bends, to pass 
over the fallen tree-tops and sunken logs ; but in ordinary seasons the navigation is 
most tortuous, and the risk of empalement on some of the innumerable snags that lie 
hidden in the channel is not inconsiderable. Along the plains the red-gum is the prin- 
cipal river timber. On some rich flats, where the overflow has carried seeds, the 
marginal strip broadens to a river-side forest, in which some charming vistas and natural 
avenues may be found, the trees tall and well-crowned with dark-green foliage, but a 
few varieties of wattle are almost the only undergrowth. In the summer of a dry 
season the outlook ov^er all the western country is monotonous in the extreme. Then 
the great rivers are shrunk to puny streams, and a man may wade across the Darling, 
or swim across the Murray in half a dozen strokes ; then the tributaries on the plains 
and back-blocks have ceased to run, the back-water creeks are covered with a brittle gauze 
of marsh-film, their courses being marked by only a fringe of stunted box-trees, and their 
disused channels shewn by patches of bare sand or shingle, hot as the desert floor. 

On the eastern water-shed the character of the rivers is altogether different. Some 
of them are short, and make a straight and quick descent to the coast, their velocity 
being checked when they reach the narrow strip of plain, where they often form lagoons 
closed in by a sand-bar, through which, when their torrents are swollen, they force a 
passage to the sea. The smaller streams to the north of Cape Howe are all very 
much of the same character — mountain torrents in wet weather, disconnected pools in 
dry, but nearly all watering a rich though narrow plain before their course is finished. 
The principal river to the south of .Sydney is the Shoalhaven, which for a considerable 
distance runs northward, being forced in that direction by the secondary coast-range ; 
but it turns to the east in the latitude of Goulburn, and cuts its way to the sea after a 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



139 



run of two hundred and sixty miles. The only considerable stream between that point 
and Sydney is the George's River, which also has a northerly course for some distance, 
but it turns to the east at Liverpool, makes a 
curve south and debouches into Botany Bay. 

But north of Sydney is a noble stream 
which in its lower reaches is called the 
Hawkesbury. Some of its tributaries, rising 
as far south as Goulburn, are likewise forced 
into a northerly course by the secondary 
coastal range. The Nepean and the Nattai 
drain the western slope of the coast-range, 
while the Warragamba, which joins the Wollon- 
dilly, drains the southern slopes of the Blue 
Mountains. The united waters go north as 
far as Wiseman's Ferry, where they turn to 
the east and find their outlet to the sea 
through Broken Bay. This river thus almost 
encircles the metropolitan county of Cumber- 
land, for some of the tributaries to the Nepean 
rise on the western slopes of the hill at the 
back of Wollongong, and it is from these 
streams running down in sandstone gorges 
that the water-supply of Sydney is now 
obtained. At a lower point in the Nepean 
is the Camden District, to w^iich the cattle 
that escaped from the first settlement betook 
themselves as the best grazing-ground near 
Sydney. Lower down the river, from Penrith 
to Richmond and Windsor, is a broad valley 
with rich soil, a deposit from frequent Hoods, 
and this was the first agricultural land farmed 
by the early settlers. The river, therefore, 
which enfolds the metropolitan county as in 
its arm, is identified with the struofo-les of the 

00 

young colony, and is still closely connected 
with the needs of Sydney. It gave the settlers 
their first rich pasturage ; its banks were 
the scene of the first great wool-farm ; its 
rich flats gave the first harvest ; and the 
gorges in its upper reaches now give their 

daily supply of water to the city, to whose inhabitants it is a holiday play-ground. 

Towards its mouth the Hawkesbury becomes romantic. This part of the river is 

to Australia what the Rhine is to Europe. It is the river of the artist and the tourist. 

and a favourite haunt of the yachtsman. The great bridge of the Newcastle Railway 




o 
a: 

< 

aa 

Jl 

O 
O 

■A 



■3 
< 



140 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




crosses it just about the point which divides the river proper from the estuarj'. Bold 
cHffs rise three hundred feet from the water's edge, their faces of weather-worn sand- 
stone displaying countless tints of red and brown ; and great hills, timbered from base 
to summit, tower above, and are reproduced in the perfect mirror of the water below. 
Reeds grow freely upon any bit of swampy fore-shore, and when a little patch of 
alluvial soil has been so far built up as to harden and become sweet, the corn shoots 
tall and fair ; and at evening or morning, or at any hour of a bright winter's day, 
there is a beauty about the narrowing estuary which pen and pencil seek in \ain to 
depict. The beauty of form, the graceful lines of the hills, the long water-tongue 
stretching out into the sea, the artist may depict ; but who can paint the soft raiment 
of atmosphere — that finest of all textures woven by Nature out of cloud and river mist, 

the soft, intangible film that 
beautifies all the crown and 
front of the mountain, as a 
smile illumines the human 
face — the violet lights, the 
purple shadows, the bands 
of emerald below and the 
shield of sapphire above, the 
river of gold that seems to 
roll out of the setting sun, 
and to flood all valleys and 
crown all hill-tops with every 
dying day ? 

Forty miles to the north 
of the Hawkesbur)' is the 
mouth of the f^unter — a 
river which drains eight 
thousand square miles, and 
which is navigable as far as 
Morpeth, thirty miles inland. 
1 he great coal-shipping port 
of Newcastle lies just inside 
the entrance. On both sides 
of the river the immediate 
country is tiat, and nearly 
all the way to Morpeth may 
be seen rich lucerne pad- 
docks, yielding six crops a year, which make of this district the great hay-field of Sydney. 
This rich soil is the result of the alluvial deposit of centuries, and the ground is still 
from time to time enriched by floods. Above Maitland the river is tapped for the 
water-supply of all the townships between that point and the sea, and a quarter of a 
million sterling has already been expended in carrying out the necessary work of storage 
and distribution. The valley of the Upper Hunter is more undulating, but still richly- 




.y':-\%,^ 



THE XEVEAN NEAR PENRITH. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, 



141 



grassed, and on the prosperous farms and the fine stations of this district are to be 
found the children and the grandchildren of some of the earliest settlers the colony knew. 

The Paterson is a beautiful little river which joins the Hunter at Hinton 'township, 
seven miles below West Maitland, and runs through rich red soil, largely occupied by 
farmers and vignerons. The ground is fertile, and the grapes grow rich and abundant. 
The fig-tree and the pomegranate flourish luxuriantly, and melons lie as thick as weeds 




about their roots. 
Steam-ships ply be- 
tween the townships 
on the river and the 
port of Newcastle, 
and above the head of navigation the river winds through many leagues of beauty. 
Scattered round its upper waters are rich cattle-stations and noted stud-farms, which 
are brought at once to the memor\' of those familiar with Australian sport by the 
mention of such names as Tocal and Segenhoe. 

North of the Hunter lie three rivers, the Hastings, the Manning and the Macleay, 
which have mucli the same general character. They roll down from the slopes of the 
New England table-land, coming out of timbered mountains down to rich valleys 
originally well stocked with cedars and pines, and across plains well adapted to 
prosperous agriculture, but whose development has been somewhat retarded by the 
badness of the harbours of the l)ar-mouthed rivers', the transit of produce being 
thus made difficult and expensive. Farther to the north is the Clarence, a noble and 
navigable river. Notwithstanding a broad, difficult and shifting bar — which the engineers 
are busy reducing — large steamers enter the heads and ascend to the wharves of Grafton, 
forty-five miles from the sea. Vox a considerable stretch up the river there are low 
banks and sand-shoals, and then come wooded isles and fertile shores with frequent 
jetties ; the smoke of many sugar-mills indicating that the rich lands are turned to a 
good account. It is hoped that the river may be rendered navigable for small craft as 



142 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




THE HUNTER AT MAITLAXI). 

far as Solferino, one hundred and thirty miles from 
the heads, from which point up to the table-land the 
ascent is steep ; but notwithstanding this a projected 
line of railway has been surveyed. 

Twenty miles to the north of the Clarence the 
Richmond springs out of Mount Lindsay, and although it also drains an area of rich 
land, its bar Is unfortunately worse than that of the former river. Steamers, however, 
go in and out, though subject to many delays, making up to Lismore on one branch, 
and up to Casino on the other. Among the lower reaches of the stream the shores are 
flat, but on the upper waters there are many charming vistas, the overhanging foliage 
being of rare luxuriance. The Tweed is the most northerly river of the colony. It 
rises in Mount Warning and makes a rapid course of thirty miles to the sea. The soil 
of the district is rich and the vegetation most luxuriant ; and perhaps no greater 
contrast is possible than the magnificent flora of this well-watered country and the arid 
districts traversed b\' the western rivers we have previously described. 

The lakes of New South Wales are neither numerous nor important. A great 
number of so-called lakes are merely salt-water estuaries formed by the inroads of the 
sea on the softer portions of the coast. To this class belong Lake Illawarra, Lake 
Macquarie, Lake Tuggerah and several others. Some of the coast lakes are merely 
intercepted river outlets, banked up by sand-bars. The fresh-water lakes are for the 
most part simply depressed surfaces where the storm-water collects into lagoons. The 
western plains are so level, and are so little drained by continuous creeks, that after 
heavy rains small shallow lakes of this kind abound. The squatters call them clay-pans, 
and plough channels into them in order to collect as much water as possible, but they 
rapidly dry up under the intense heat of the summer sun. Some of the larger natural 
hollows are more permanent. Of these the most important is Lake George, which has, 
however, been dry within the last half-century, and cattle have grazed over its bed. 
Still it is the largest and undoubtedlv the finest fresh-water lake in the colon\-. It 



TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



>43 



is situated about twenty-five miles south-west of tiie town ol Goulburn on the border- 
line between the counties of Argyle and Murray. It is twenty-five miles in len^nh and 
eight miles in breadth, and lies at the feet of the Big Divide, on its western side. On 
the other side of the ridge, and a few miles directly east of Lake George, is the little 
sheet of fresh water known as Lake Hathurst. To the eastward of Jerilderie, in the 
county Urana, is situated the small lake of the same name, and surrounding it are a few 
lagoons, also dignified with the designation of lakes. Approaching the head-waters of the 
Talyawalka, one of the tributaries of the Darling, are a chain of fresh-water swamps, 
and on the western side of the same river the most important lagoons are Lakes 
Menindie, Cawndilla, Tandon and Tandare ; farther north is the broad swamp called 
Poopelloe Lake, but few of these are permanent. In the north-west corner of the 
colony occurs another chain of so-called lakes, but they are little better than swamps, 



,r^«-rT'»ii : 



■^i^^^ei. ^M^^i^ig^'i'tii'iiipiNHy^^g?^ 




THE KIVKK PATERSON. 



full in the rainy seasons, but drying rapidly with the approach of the summer heat. 
The lake area is singularly small in a country containing three hundred and eleven thousand 
and seventy-eight square miles, or one hundred and ninety-nine million ninety thousand 
and two hundred and seventeen acres — a tract of country more than half as large again 
as I'rance, or five times the area of England and Wales. 

At one time the term New South Wales was applied to the entire eastern half of 
the Continent, this being the name given it by Captain Cook who took possession of it 
five different times, landing first at Botany Bay and finally at Possession Island, the 



144 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



point at which the 
great navigator bade 
farewell to the land of 
his discover)-. How- 
ever, the name is now 
used to designate only 
the colony lying be- 
tween twenty-eight and 
thirty - seA'en degrees 
south latitude, and the 
meridians of one hun- 
dred and forty-one and 
one hundred and fifty- 
four degrees east longi- 
tude. Taken diagonally, its greatest length is nine hundred 
miles, but its length due north and south is about six hun- 
dred and fifty ; its greatest breadth is about seven hundred and 
sixty miles. Its eastern side is longer than its western, and in shape 
it is an irregular quadrangle. The colony of Queensland forms its 
northern boundary, from which it is separated b\' the IJumaresq 
River, the Dividing Range and Macpherson's Range. The Pacific Ocean bounds it on 
the east, and the colony of Victoria on the south, from which it is separated by a 
surveyed straight line from Cape Howe to the source of the Murray, thence by that 
river to the meridian of one hundred and forty-one degrees east, which forms its western 
limit and separates it from the colony of South Australia. 




THK RICHMOND RIVER AT CORAKI. 



.'.'^._ 





SUUTU HEAD LIGHT, NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO PORT JACKSON. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



THE HARBOUR. 



/"^OMING towards Port Jackson from the east, at a distance of about sixty miles, 
^^-^ when the last reflection of daylight has died out of the sky, and the stars are 
shining through an even depth of gloom from the zenith to the water's edge, the 
captain of any Sydney-bound craft will note, nearly where the sun has set, the first indi- 
cation of a faintly luminous haze. That is the Sydney light, or rather the reflection of 
the flash thrown up on the sky, for the tower and lantern are still below the horizon. 
On every re-appearance this pale blue light becomes a little brighter, and presently a 
movement like a very rapid play of faint aurora rays is noticeable. Then a spark, like 
the nucleus of a comet, seems kindled just beneath the luminous beam — a spark that 
glows for a moment and then expires, and is again enkindled, and now a little brighter — 
a little brighter with every minute, a little larger with every quarter of an hour, till 
two hours before the Heads are reached it has erown to be a flash of intense 
brilliancy, and its long rays sweep the horizon, dividing the darkness of the night with 
lines of living fire, and scoring the black surface of the ocean with bands of whitest flame. 
All eyes are scanning the coast-line, which stands out clearly at each successive flash. 
Right across the course it stretches, with no apparent opening. Yet almost straight for 
the steep and rugged rock on which the light-house stands the ship is steered, till on a 
nearer approach the flash is left a little on the port bow. For now another beacon has 
appeared, red and steady, slightly to the north of the first light ; and between the two 
is '.' The Gap " — a dip in the outline of the sea-cliff, over which pn a clear night the 
glow of the Sydney lights may be seen. The Outer South Head, from which the 
electric flash flames forth, is a high, bold headland to the south of "The Gap." It was 
nearly under this perpendicular cliff, on a wild night black with tempest, and when the 
old light was invisible during the severest gusts of the driving rain, that the ill-fated 



,46 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Dunbar, though commanded by an experienced officer familiar with the Port, crashed upon 
the rocks, and went down with the loss of all hands but one, who was ultimately rescued. 

North of " The Gap " the cliff again rises, and then descends, trending at the same 
time inland. Its extreme point is the Inner South Head, on which is the fixed red light 
marking the entrance, and serving also as a warning against the short reef in which the 
headland terminates. Even on a moonless night the grandeur of the entrance is visible. 
The tall steep cliff of the North Head stands up sheer on the right, dark and sombre, 
and straight in front is the bold outline of the Middle Head. But the breadtli of the 
entrance and the depth of the water permit the vessel to proceed with unchecked speed; 
and, in fact, nothing so impresses the traveller arriving by night as the ease and confi- 
dence with which the largest vessel is taken in, so different from the cautious creeping 
way in which harbours are frequently entered. 

Once inside the North Head the traveller will notice that there is a large opening 
to the right. This is the entrance to North Harbour and Middle Harbour; but it 
is not the route to the city. On the port bow is seen a light-ship, anchored there to 
mark the only obstruction in the entrance — a rocky patch known as the " Sow and 
Pigs." Between these rocks and the nearest headland on either side lies the shoalest 
part of the entrance, but having on it twenty feet of water at low-tide. To admit the 
passage of the largest ships at all times a deep cut has been dredged in the eastern 
channel, the course of which is indicated at night by lights along the shore, and in the 
day-time by obelisks. Steering through this channel, and passing Shark Point and Shark 
Island — names only too suggestive of a danger in which the Harbour abounds — the 
magnificent sweep of the shore-line of Rose Bay is seen on the left, and on the right 
Bradley's Head projecting into the water like a huge and lofty mole. Here begins the 
Inner Harbour, and heedless of the sleepers in the villas that crown the heights the 
cautious commander wakes all the echoes by a blast of his fog-horn, for he is entering 
now the region of careful navigation, and is under strict regulations to announce his 
advance and check his speed ; for this Inner Harbour is alive and active by night as 
well as by day with colliers, ferr)-boats, coasters and fishing-craft. 

At this point the signs of a great city burst into view. All ahead is light and 
life ; lights twinkling through the trees of the shore on either hand ; lights moving 
rapidly over the surface of the water between all the dark points in front ; lights beyond 
the red spark which caps the round tower of l-'ort Denison ; and lines of lights where 
the streets of the city climb and extend along the ridges of the hills. The great ship 
moves slowly past the round tower, for coming out of different bays ferry-boats, to and 
from North Shore, are crossing and re-crossing, and approaching may be the last boat 
to Manly, and the nightly coasting-steamers leaving for Newcastle or the Illawarra port^. 
On the left lie the men-o'-war at anchor, and perhaps from some deck, wh(;re the spread of 
bunting and the brilliant illuminations betoken festival, may come strains of music, while 
swift launches are darting hither and thither, keeping up communication with the shore. 

Between Lavender Bay on the one side and Circular Quay on the other the lights 
multiply and thicken — white lights from overhanging windows, red lights and green from 
piers and ships, reproducing themselves as luminous columns in the depths. If the 
water be still they are so many lines of many-coloured flame, but the plash of an oar 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



'47 




fefe% ||lii 



li 



^m. 




IjiMp ^^ 


m. % 


ft- 


' i 


'' m 


Jk 



,48 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

or the dash of a paddle-boat sets them on the dance. They entwine, intermingle, become 
convoluted — blent and broken in a maze of colour like the transformation scene of a 
pantomime. The Circular Quay is brilliant with the electric-beam which, piercing through 
the rigging and reflected from the sides of the vessels that crowd the wharves, gives to 
the water-surface a steely blue, showing up with strong lights and shades the outlines of 
giant ships and ocean-steamers lying round the wharf, and the shadowy masses of the 
great wool-stores behind. 

Aloft, tier above tier on the westward side, the lighted windows of old Sydney 
look down upon the Cove where the first anchor was dropped, close upon a hundred 
years ago ; for the steepest part of all the city was the earliest occupied, the settlers 
clambering up these cliffs, and lingering in sight of the water from which they seemed 
loath to break away. This high ground is kept in view as the ship rounds the embattled 
rise of Dawes' Point. Another line of jetties, ships, wharves and warehouses occupies 
the sweep between the Battery and Miller's Point ; and past the latter is the entrance 
to Darling Harbour — a busy scene even by night. The shore is thick with jetties, 
alongside which loom, silent and dark, the bold forms of various craft, while elsewhere 
are steamers agleam with long rows of cabin-lights, their decks alive with the bustle 
of departure. Passengers, porters and stewards throng the gangways ; seamen rush 
hither and thither at the order of the officer pacing the bridge and hurrying forward 
the departure ; the shrill scream of the whistle breaks upon the ear ; and the clang of 
the signal-bell ringing out upon the midnight air echoes from the silent hills that skirt 
the water's edge upon the other side. Behind the long line of vessels is the back- 
ground of the rising land, with houses irregularly grouped, and the summit of the 
rocky hill — the Acropolis of Sydney — crowned with the tower of the Observatory. It is 
pleasant after the voyage to step out on the wharf, to hurrj- up the steep-cut rocky 
street, to eet to rest and to dream and to wait for the morrow. 

To see Sydney first by night is to see it full of bewildering mystery. To see it 
afterwards by daylight, while it will explain the unknown, will also reveal new charms. 
A good way to understand the Harbour is to take a steam-launch, and starting from 
Circular Quay to coast along the southern shore to the Heads, noting en route the 
continuous succession of promontories and bays ; then, crossing over to Manly and 
Middle Harbour, and following up the northern shore towards Parramatta, to return to 
Darling Harbour by the western shore. Such a trip will omit the upper branch of the 
Parramatta River, but it will give a fair view of the greater part of Sydney Harbour 
at present occupied for business or for pleasure. 

Let the start be made from the Circular Quay at an early hour, just as the great 
city awakens to another day of strong-pulsed life and bustling activity. P>om the mouth 
of the bay a backward glance at the Quay shews the whole situation, and the contour 
of Sydney Cove — the chief water-gate of the city — with its background of stores, is 
taken in at one view. The low land at the mouth of the old Tank Stream — shewn 
elsewhere in a map of early Sydney — was filled in, and a semicircular wharf replaced 
the original shore-line, making a splendid city-front, with an easier gradient to the 
main streets than there is from any other wharf ; and the whole of this frontage remains 
as one property in the hands of the Government. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



149 




THE EASTERN SIDE OF CIRCULAR (^UAV 



I50 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

The extreme point on the western side is not a wharf at all, but a reserve in 
front of Dawes' Battery, the guns of which point eastward straight down the Harbour ; 
the grassy slope in front — generally dotted over with nurse-maids and children — makes on 
a summer afternoon a pleasant contrast to the adjoining jetties, steamers and sheds, 
always alive with strenuous labour. South of these jetties is the berth occupied by the 
Peninsular and Oriental boats, one of which is always lying alongside, the lascars and 
coolies on deck, with their red caps and blue smocks, relieving the black hull with bits 
of foreign colour, while on the slope of the land rise the red brick ofifices built by the 
old "A.S.N." Company. South of the "P. and O." steamer begins the Government 
portion of the wharf, with a fine berth for a large vessel, and behind it ma)' be seen 
the Sailors' Home, the Mariners' Church and the Commissariat Store. This last is one 
of the oldest stone buildings in the colony, plain but substantial, built of material 
quarried on the spot, and shewing that Sydney sandstone can weather a hundred years 
of exposure without deterioration. The centre of the crescent was once ordinary wharfage, 
but it has now been entirely given up to waterman's stairs and for tlie accommodation 
of Harbour steamers, the passenger traffic focalizing here, connected as this place is 
with the tram service and the omnibus routes. Clustering on the water's edge, along 
the dark stone coping of the Quay, are the waiting-rooms attached to the jetties of the 
Harbour ferry-boats. On the eastern side, a portion of the wharf is devoted to outward- 
bound ships, which load up their cargoes from the great produce-stores, separated from 
the wharf by only the width of the road. Northward the Orient Company has rented 
a portion of the wharf frontage, with one of its covered goods-sheds, and beyond that 
again lie the boats of the Messageries Maritinics, lively with foreign imiforms and 
costumes, and telling of that intermingling of the peoples . of many lands which follows 
so closely in the train of commerce. Adjoining this berth is the boat-shed of the 
Harbour Police, and next to that the steam-ferry for horses and carts which plies all 
day long to Milson's Point. The eastern, like the western tongue, is still a public reserve, 
the site of Fort Macquarie, one of the ancient structures, but probably destined to give 
way to a railway-shed. Leading up to the Fort is a rocky escarpment, the pathway 
along the summit of which has received the borrowed name of the Tarpeian Waj-. 

Glancing round the wharf the great produce-stores arrest the attention of the 
observer at once, as indicating the character, as well as the extent, of the business done. 
The lartjest and one of the earliest of these is Goldsborougrh and Mort's wool-store, 
which occupies the whole frontage between Phillip and Castlereagh Streets. It stands 
foursquare, simple, massive, elegant, striking as it were the key-note to the commercial 
movement of the colony. A little distance behind it is the tall stone-built store of 
Messrs. Harrison, Jones and Devlin, while all along the east front of the Quay runs a 
line of stores ending with the high handsome warehouse lately built for the business of 
Messrs. Maiden, Hill and Clark. The number and capacity of these stores tell tiie tale 
of the magnitude of the business for which they were constructed, while their quality 
displays the enterprise and taste of their proprietors, and the confidence felt in tlie 
future. On the high ground behind Mort's store may be seen the upper windows of two 
palatial structures built for the accommodation of some of the Civil Service Departments, 
used as offices for the Colonial Secretary, the Minister for Works and the Minister for 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



151 



Lands ; and behind these are the towers and spires of the city. Through the rigging 
of the ships, on the eastward side of the Quay, is seen the rising ground of the 
Government Domain, surmounted by the tower and flag-staff of the vice-regal residence. 

The greenery of this Domain, 
and that of the Battery reserve 
on the other side of the Cove, 
is grateful to the eye, bringing 
as it does into strong and strik- 
ing relief the contrast between 
the leisure and the labour of life. 




ELIZABETH BAY AM) DARLING POINT. 

'^ On the outer side of P'ort Macquarie 

lies the little boat-harbour, formed by a 

projecting mole, which is the landing-place 

for Government House, and also the 

point nearest to the anchorage of the men-o'-war, situated 

at the mouth of I*"arm Cove. Here, when not on duty 

in the other colonies, rides the Admiral's flag-ship — symbol of the naval power of 

Great Britain, and of the close connection between the colonies and the mother-country. 

Round her cluster the other vessels of the squadron, ranging in size and power 

from frigates to corvettes, gun-boats and yacht-like schooners. Here, too, anchor at 

present all foreign men-o'-war that enter the Port, and not unfrequently the ensigns of 

half a dozen nations may be seen at the same time floating on the breeze. Cruisers 

from all countries, when in these seas, make for Sydney Harbour to coal and to refit, 

and there "is not a well-known flag that has not been seen flying in Farm Cove, 

including a representative of the new-born navy of Japan. When many vessels are at 



152 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

anchor here the stairs of the Httle boat-harbour are alive with officers in uniform landing 
or departing in long-boats manned by blue-jacketed sailors, or with consuls and visitors 
going on board to pay their respects, for nowhere is international courtesy more observed, 
or hospitality to visitors more displayed, than in Sydnej' ; and a foreign man-o'-war rarely 
leaves the Port without some festive demonstration in return for kindness received. The 
view from the deck, or through the large port-holes of any of the men-o'-war, is singu- 
larly charming, especially to the south, for the eye there rests on the gracefully-curved 
sea-wall of the Cove, with the Botanic Gardens in the background, with their smooth 
broad lawns in front and their umbrageous slopes and winding walks rising behind. 
Through the tree-tops may be seen peeps of here and there a church-spire and the roofs 
of the taller houses of the city. 

Government House stands well out to view on the western slope, with its 
picturesque gardens and lawns terraced down towards the water. A few years ago the 
dominating object of this view was the Garden Palace, the Exhibition Building of 1879, 
the dome of which was the largest and finest on which the Southern Cross has ever 
shone. But one mild summer morning the whole disappeared, leaving only a heap of 
ashes. No building, however, is necessary to give a charm to the Botanic Gardens. One 
of the earliest attemps at horticulture was made on this site, and from the very 
beginning it has been carefully reserved. Nature has done much for the position, and its 
original beauties have been turned to the best account by the art of the landscape 
gardener. With good reason is it a favourite resort of the Sydney public, especially on 
the afternoons when there is any performance by one of the military or naval bands. 
A part of the Gardens has been laid out with a view to instruction in botany, but the 
predominant purpose has been to make a pleasure-ground. Naval men could not wish 
for a lovelier spot for their repose than one that gives them a constant view of this 
singularly charming landscape ; and striking indeed, to one standing on the deck, is the 
contrast between the implements of grim-visaged war and this abode of peace. The house 
selected for the residence of the Admiral is situated on Kiarabilli Point, on the northern 
side of the Harbour, and commands a complete view of the squadron. 

On the headland of the peninsula on the eastern side of the Cove is the stone 
seat upon which the wife of one of the early Governors — a lady who took much interest in 
laying out the Domain for popular enjoyment — used to rest after her rambles, and on 
the stone her name is carved. Sitting on " Mrs. Macquarie's Chair," and looking north- 
wards, the eye rests on the island of Fort Denison, a small rock lying in mid-channel. 
In early days it was christened Pinch-gut by convict prisoners, who had painful memories 
of being sent there to repent on short commons. In Governor Denison's time it was 
turned into a fortification, a round tower being erected and several guns placed at 
barbette. Round Mrs. Macquarie's Chair is the entrance to Woolloomooloo Bay, on 
the western side of which are the public baths. At the head of the Bay is a wooden 
wharf much used for the landing of coal and timber, and over the piles of lumber 
may be seen the clock-tower of the P^ish Market ; beyond lies a monotonous mass of 
houses, the streets rising steeply towards the distant ridge, and on the western side is 
a precipitous rocky escarpment up which stone staircases have been cut ^for foot- 
passengers and these remain as a memorial of an earlier date. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



J 53 



Off the mouth of 
Woolloomooloo Bay 
lies Garden Island, 
where one of the first 
gardens was formed. 
It is now given up 
to the Imperial Go- 
vernment as a naval 
ddpot, and the original 
form of the island is 
largely lost through 
the alterations made 
to fit it for its pre- 
sent requirements. At 
Pott's Point business 
ceases and pleasure 
takes its place, for 
here begin those 
water - side mansions 
and gardens for which 
Sydney Harbour is so 
justly famed. The 
climate gives every 
encouragement to the 
florist and the land- 
scape gardener. Frost 
is unknown along 
these Harbour slopes, 
the extremes of sum- 
mer heat are tem- 
pered by the ocean 
breezes, and flowers 
can be gathered and 
roses will bloom the 
winter long. The 
mean temperature of 
Sydney is two de- 
grees above .that of 
Nice, and only three 
degrees lower than 
that of Messina. 

Here Nature gives heightened effect to the labours of Art. The myrtle flourishes beside 
the orange-tree, and hyacinths burst into all their florid glory with the opening days of 
spring. At Pott's Point the rock-face to the water was originally a steep slope, and the 







•J. 



O 



as 

D 

O 

2 
< 



> 

Q 
> 

05 



154 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

utmost has been done, while following the lines of nature, to turn to good account every 
inch of ground. In some cases the frontage is occupied by boat and bathing houses ; else- 
where trees grow down to the water's edge, and almost dip their branches into the rippling 
waves. The broad shining leaves of the native fig overhang the gra}' rock awash at high 
tide, and beyond are glimpses of green lawns flanked by creeper-mantled terraced walls, 
above which are the windows of houses peeping through everlasting wreaths of foliage, and 
festooned with frequent masses of various fragrant bloom. All along the fore-shore of 
the Point is the same fair order with perpetual variety — lu.\urious villas, elaborate garden- 
grounds. Now and again the rugged ascent is scored with stair-ways cut from the living 
rock ; carved with balustrades, and adorned with vases, from which spring plants of the 
cactus or yucca tribes ; the heights being sometimes crowned with arbours, ferneries, 
conservatories and summer-huts, all embosomed in foliage and bloom. 

Beyond the Point lies Elizabeth Bay with its sandy beach — the old family mansion 
of the estate just showing its dome above the surrounding trees. Then comes Elizabeth 
Bay Point, with another cluster of water-side houses, and then the open sweep of Rush- 
cutter's Bay, where the fore-shore has been reclaimed and is now a public park. The 
flat ground in front is surrounded b)- an amphitheatre of higher ground, on the ridges of 
which are the thickly-clustered houses of Darlinghurst, Paddington and Woollahra. Darling 
Point flanks the Bay on the east, and on its heights may be seen one of the most 
picturesque churches of Sydney, St. Mark's, the graceful spire of which rises from the 
dense hanging foliage that crowns a verdant sloping lea. On this promontory the beauties of 
Elizabeth Bay are repeated with equal effectiveness, though with many variations. It is a 
lovely and favourite suburb, and contains many magnificent mansions, castellated, turreted, 
mimic citadels of peace, surrounded by grassy lawns and well-kept gardens. Almost directly 
opposite the point, and separated from it by a strait about a quarter of a mile in 
width, is Clark's Island, dedicated as a reserve for public recreation. The high ground 
of Darling Point overlooks on the eastern side the beautiful inlet of Double Bay — its 
white beach a public reserve, while the flat behind is fairly built upon. Behind the 
streets of Double Bay a few houses dot the hill-slopes and merge into one of Sydney's 
most beautiful suburbs — the populous and fast-spreading suburb of Woollahra, studded 
with handsome mansions, many of which are not inferior to the Harbour homes that 
cluster along the water's edge. 

The promontory on the eastern side of Double Bay is known by the name of 
Point Piper — so called after an early settler — and on its eastern point stands a handsome 
structure reared by an Australian millionaire. The grounds of this mansion occupy 
nearly the whole extent of the Point. Its noble fa9ade looks out upon the Harbour 
over broad sweeps of lawn, in which the native trees have been carefully preserved, 
their sombre hue being broken and relieved by the intermingling of trees of European 
and tropic growth. Viewed from the water the Point glows WMth a variety of tints and 
shades — from rich emerald to subdued olive lovely contrasts are presented in masses of 
lustrous green. The sea about the rocks and tiny beaches is of crystal clearness, and 
all sights and sounds of the busy city are curtained off by the abrupt western rise of the 
hill. Where the rocks of Point Piper end the blonde beach of Rose Bay begins, and 
sweeps in a broken crescent — a mile and a half in extent — round to the white sand of 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



•55 




I 



Milk Beach and the battery reserve of Shark's 
Point. From Rose Bay to Bondi Bay on the 
ocean beach was once an old Harbour mouth, 
which has been gradually filled and choked up by the slow washings of ocean sand. 

Near the snowy span of Milk Beach is an old house possessing an * historic 
interest ; its builder having been no other than Wentworth, that renowned Australian to 
whom the colony owes its Constitution. He is buried close at hand, and the little 
mausoleum that marks his resting-place is a spot much visited by all who take an 
interest in the history of Australia. About the entrance of the Harbour the traveller will 
have continual remembrances of names familiar in the annals of the colony, for a 
number of her statesmen have settled on the various reaches of the Port. 

Passing Vaucluse Bay and Parsley Bay, and the cluster of rocks known as the 
" Bottle and Glass," the broad sweep of Watson's Bay is reached. This is a favourite 
holiday-resort, and also the nearest landing-place for those who wish to climb the South 
Head, and look down on the long wash of the Pacific, and the green curling waves 
that break into pools and cascades of snowy foam at the feet of the rugged cliffs. On 
the summit of the cliff is the great light-house, the reflection of whose electric-beam is 
seen for sixty miles out at sea. Between the light-house and the Inner South Head is a 
fissure in the seaward face of the cliff, known as "Jacob's Ladder," to be attempted only 
by an agile climber, down which descended the brave Icelandic lad who took succour to 
the Dunbar s sole survivor, Ijing on a ledge above the tragic " Gap." Here, too, frown- 
ing grimly above fair green mounds of turf, are the great guns pointing out to sea, and 
nearer the Inner Head others of heavier metal are fi.xed on pivots in pits cut in the 
rock. Below them is a torpedo ddpot, and at Camp Cove is the Pilot Station, to 
which is attached a steamer kept in constant readiness for disaster or emergency. Right 
out beyond the guns, and almost on the extreme edge of the Inner South Head, stands 
the Hornby Light-house, with its striped tower, the fixed red light of which makes 
so noticeable a feature in the darkness when entering the Sj-dney Heads by night 



IS6 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Returning to the little town of Watson's Bay, which nestles about the slopes behind 
the curved stretch of sandy beach, the traveller again embarks, and sailing across the 
mouth of the Port, with its long lazy roll, gets under the lee of the bold North Head, 
and finds himself in front of the Quarantine Station. All the requirements of such an 
institution are fulfilled here. The locality is six miles from the city, and easily acces- 
sible. The area is superabundant for all the claims that can be made upon it ; the 
position is breezy and healthy, and the swampy crown of the hill furnishes an ample 
supply of fresh water. Recent events have led to great improvements in the appliances 
of the establishment. Small-pox, though frequently imported, has never yet obtained a 
footing in Australia, having been always stamped out b)' the most vigorous measures. 
Passengers arrive now in such large steamers that a single case of infectious disease 
means the sending of several hundreds of people to the Quarantine Ground. Thanks to 
the liberality of the Government and the energy of the Health Department, every 
facility for dealing with the largest passenger-ship has been provided. A steam-laundry 
has been built capable of washing the whole of the linen in twenty-four hours ; fumi- 
gating chambers for disinfecting all woollen garments are provided ; while cottages and 
pavilion hospitals are scattered about in sufficient numbers, and with a degree of isola- 
tion equal to any probable emergency. The ground for infected passengers is specially 
marked off, and the whole Station is enclosed by a fence extending across the penin- 
sula from the Harbour to the 
sea. It is at all times annoying 
to be detained at the end of a 
long voyage, but everything pos- 
sible has been done to make a 
forced residence agreeable. From 
the summit of the hill there is a 
grand panorama of the ocean and 
the main entrance to Port Jackson ; 
while the view up the Harbour is 
singularly lovely, and a man might 
lie and look at it for days if he 
were not fretting to get away. 
The discomforts and nuisances 
too often inseparable from a com- 
pulsory detention in a lazaretto 
are happily absent here. 

At the head of North Har- 
bour lies the village of Manly, 
which is situated on a fiat between 
the North Head on the one side 
and the Manly Heights on the 
other. This flat is really an old Harbour mouth, which has been slowly barred by the sand 
washed in by centuries of billows. " The Corso," as the level street is named which runs 
from the landing-jetty to the beach, is only a few hundred yards in length. Manly, 




THE OCEAN BEACH, MANLY. 




SYDNEY HEADS FROM THE SOUTH. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 157 

therefore, has this special peculiarity as a watering-place— that it is a Harbour-side and 
a sea-side village all in one, and in a walk of a few minutes the visitor can pass from 
a land-locked sheet of water, smooth and transparent as a lake, to the ocean beach, 
fretted with the long roll of the Pacific. Standing on a magnificent and commanding site 
on the north-east point of the North Head is the Cardinal's palace, and by its side a 
Roman Catholic seminary. The village of Manly, which originally nestled on the flats, 
is now creeping up the heights, and the line of cottages is extending all along the 
road to Middle Harbour. Of all the water-side resorts Manly is the most frequented. 
Well-appointed steamers maintain a constant communication with the city. Many 
merchants have their homes here, while the tired workers from the town flock down 
on holidays to loll and stroll upon the beach and to fill their lungs with the fresh sea 
breeze. In summer time the beach is a promenade, gay with colour and vocal with the 
laughter of children. But the great fete of the village is the wild-flower show which 
takes place in the month of September, and which has now become an institution. It 
had its origin in an effort to pay off a church debt — a happy inspiration -suggesting it 
as an improvement on the ordinary bazaar. Flowers fill all the bush about Manly in 
the spring. Heath-like epacrids of many varieties carpet the table-lands ; wattles of 
various shades of yellow bloom in the scrub on the flats and fill the air with their 
fragrant perfume'; waratahs or native tulips shine in their crimson beauty like cones of 
fire in the gullies ; the aromatic native roses and other boroneas grow in profusion ; 
the gold and silver stars of Bethlehem lie thickly tufted on the ground, and on many 
rocky faces of the coast-ravines are beautiful orchids called rock-lilies. The suggestion 
was to blend these beauties of the bush together. The idea was eagerly taken up, and 
was by tasteful hands made a reality. The old pavilion in the little park was trans- 
formed into a gay green bower, in which flowers and ferns were artistically interwoven ; 
palms took the place of ordinary pillars ; the berries of the bush made harmonies with 
dark-green leaves ; fountains plashed and cascades danced over mimic falls and grottoes, 
which in the . evening were illuminated by a well-directed play of the electric beam. The 
fairy-scene became an immense attraction, and the flowers paid the church debt. 

Coasting from Manly up the Harbour the first great headland passed is Dobroyd, 
a bold cliff exposed to the full force of south-easterly gales. The navigation here for 
small craft is somewhat dangerous, for at times the Biimborah rises suddenly when the 
groundswell from the ocean touches the ledge of rocks that reaches out from the foot 
of the cliff, and the slow-rolling wave becomes then an angry breaker, which has brought 
disaster on many a boat's unwary crew. After rounding Dobroyd the entrance into 
Middle Harbour opens out. This is a long many-armed estuary stretching from the 
entrance fully five miles into the heart of the hills. The weather side of this entrance 
is exposed to the sea rolling in from the Heads, but the eastern side is protected, and 
here, on the tranquil shore, holiday-seekers by the thousand are landed, for at the foot 
of the rocky hill spreads out a large well-grassed flat and a smooth white beach that 
seem made by Nature for picnics. So roomy a playground, and one so easily 
accessible, does not often lie close to a great city. Opposite Clontarf runs out a long 
sand-spit, making a natural breakwater and narrowing the channel. Between its point 
and the opposite shore is a punt, which forms a connecting link in the overland route 



1=58 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



to Manly. Round "The Spit" the 
waters divide into Long Bay and 
Middle Harbour proper. The latter, 
after throwing off one or two inlets, 
ceases to be navigable except for small 
boats, as it narrows and shallows be- 
tween steep, rocky, timber - covered 
banks. At present Middle Harbour is 
almost untouched by commerce, and 
the houses on its overlooking ridges 
are not many, but it is a favourite 
cruising-ground and summer camping- 
place on account of its lake-like beauty 
— the headlands overlapping each other, 
producing something of the appearance 
of a Scotch loch. No more tranquil 
retreat than these solitudes afford could 
be desired, and that a busy city lies 
only a few miles off seems impossible. 







The south arm of the estuary of Middle Harbour runs westward for some distance, 
making of Middle Head a broad, bold peninsula. On the point of this, looking straight 
out to sea, stands the greatest fortification of Sydney. The gun-carriages are placed in 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



'59 



shallow circular wells ; the rock is caverned with magazines, and the powerful guns 
sweep all the water's face in front. To this point come the artillery, professional and 
volunteer, to practice marksmanship, and to learn with accuracy the distance of any 
point that could be occupied by an invading foe. Often on a Saturday afternoon the 
headlands are alive with spectators watching the practice. Here, too, the scientific 




THE FORTIFICATIONS AT SOUTH HEAD, 



manoeuvres of the Easter encampment are elaborately gone through, while a detachment 
of infantry occupies an entrenched camp on the summit, and rehearses the operations 
necessary to prevent a landing on either of the Middle Harbour bays, or an attempt 
to take the forts in the rear. At the foot of the cliff at George's Head are 
embrasures in which are guns that command the channel and at the same time sweep 
the area of the torpedo-field, and protect any boom which might be constructed. 

West of George's Head lies Ghowder Bay, another favourite picnic-haunt, where a 
large hotel, a dancing pavilion, lawns and promenades are provided for holiday-seekers. 
Beyond Taylor's Bay, much visited by boating-parties and botanizers, Bradley's Head 
runs out due south, and forms with the opposite headland of Point Piper the entrance 
to the Inner Harbour. Past these are many charming bays deeply indenting the shore; 
Little Sirius Cove, Mossman's Bay, Shell Gove, Neutral Harbour and Gareening Gove. 
It is hard to say which of these is the most beautiful. They have a general resem- 
blance, yet each has its own special characteristics ; and they are all deserved favourites 
with boating-parties. The large water-space in front of them, between Kurraba Point 
and Kiarabilli, is Neutral Bay, the anchorage for outward-bound ships, which can lie 
here in the shelter and out of the fair-way. Past Kiarabilli is Milson's Point, important 
as being the terminus of the principal North Shore ferry and one of the starting-places 
of the Great North Road. Then comes the deep recess of Lavender Bay, the street 
from the wharf at the head of which is a long flight of steps cut in the solid rock. 



i6o 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED, 



leading picturesquely, if somewhat toil- 
somely, to the streets above. Mc 
Mahon's Point is another ferry-landing, 
the road running at a stiff gradient 
up to the higher land. Then come 
Berry's Bay and Ball's 
Head Bay, both deeply 
recessed, and the en- 
trance to Lane Cove, 
an estuary running up 
a considerable distance 
into the hills, though 
only navigable but for 
a few miles. 
This northern 
side of Syd- 
ney Harbour 
has as deep 
a water -fron- 
tage as the 
southern, but 
the rise from 
the shore is 
steeper, and 
the elevated 
rround much 



scored by the deep 
gorges of Middle 
Harbour and Lane 
Cove, and the nu- 
merous lateral val- 
leys running down 
to them. The sur- 
face is thus broken 
up into ridges and 
gullies, the main 
road running along 
the summit. The 
soil on the hi<rh 
ground has been the manly wild-flower show. 

found admirably adapted to orangeries and orchards, and market-gardens abound for many 
miles inland. This orchard cultivation characterizes all the district westward as far as Parra- 




THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



i6i 



inatta ; indeed, the line which follows the course taken by this arm of the Harbour 
may almost be said to be the line of orange culture, the lower land on the south 
being more exposed to frosts and mists than the warm ridges on the northern side. 

Hunter's Hill occupies the peninsula between Lane Cove and the Tarramatta River, 
affording a large water-frontage to the water-side residences. The Hill is covered with 




ONE OF THE BIG GUNS AT MIDDLE HEAD. 



villas not less picturesque, though less imposing, than those found about the fore-shores 
nearer the city. The soil here is loamy, and being set a little inland from the salt sea- 
breezes, rich and delicate vegetation makes a more luxuriant display. The houses are 
mostly built of the fine sandstone which lies a few feet beneath the surface, and gorgeous 
and glorious creepers are trained wherever balcony or trellis-work affords an opportunity. 
It is a richly floral district, and it is almost impossible to exaggerate the beauty and 
splendour of the rich masses of Bojigainvillca which cover a whole house-side in the 
earliest days of spring, or of the climbing rose that makes a veritable " field of cloth of 
gold " over a hundred square feet of trellis in every spring and autumn. Nowhere else 
along the river or l)y the sea can be seen finer contrasts of colour and foliage — bananas 
and plantains by the water's edge, cedars drooping on the slopes, hibiscus and flame-trees 
putting out their crimson and scarlet blooms, the tender green of the budding vine 
prophetic of the purple show of autumn, and the dark glossy leaves of the orange trees 
rich with their golden fruit. At Gladesville, a little higher up the river, is one of the 
large asylums for the mentally diseased, where the thoughtful care of the superintendent 



I 62 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 





LAVENDER BAY. 



has done everything possible to veil the sombre 
aspects of the place, and to alleviate inevitable 
confinement by surrounding it with a glory of 
flowers. Steamers go up the River within a short 
distance of Parramatta, and as far as Ryde the 
scenery on either side is charming. Two bridges 
are thrown across — one for the road connecting 
Fivedock with Gladesville, and the other at Con- 
cord for the Great Northern Railway to Newcastle. 
Returning to the mouth of Lane Cove the con- 
spicuous feature in the River, after passing the 
magazine at Spectacle Island, is Cockatoo Island, 
the site of one of the earliest prisons in the 
colony. Out of its rocky side a graving-dock was hewn many years ago large enough 
for the ships of that day ; and here the Galatea was docked. But a still larger one 
is wanted for the iron-clads of the present time, and accordingly another large excavation 
has recently been constructed which will accommodate any vessel not more than six 
hundred feet long. From Cockatoo there is a beautiful view up Iron Cove, over 
which is a bridge connecting the peninsula of Fivedock with that of Balmain. On the 
heights of the latter is the large lunatic asylum at Callan Park, built on the pavilion 
principle, at a- cost of more than a quarter of a million, and capable of receiving six 
hundred patients. After passing Goat Island, the site of another powder-magazine, the 
eastern side of the Balmain Peninsula comes into view, and a busy industry makes itself 
seen and heard. On one of its subsidiary bays are Mort's Dock and Engineering Works, 
where vessels of all sizes are repaired, and where the clang of hammers and the whirr 
of machinery make perpetual din. Other industrial establishments have also pitched their 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



163 



quarters here, and as a large number of artisans are obliged to live near their work 
Balmain claims the reputation of being pre-eminently the engineering suburb. 

Between Balmain and the older parts of the city lies Pyrmont, another of those 
peninsulas which stretch like the fingers of a hand into the Harbour. Here is the patent 
slip of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company, and various other industrial establish- 
ments haunt this locality. But the specialty of Pyrmont is its quarry. The sandstone 
here is of finer grain and more uniform colour than that found anywhere else around 
Sydney. All the finest of the new buildings are constructed or faced with this stone, 
and the original hill of Pyrmont is fast disappearing under the active labours of the 
quarrymen. Pyrmont, which is in the city limit, is connected with the eastern side of 
Darling Harbour by a wooden bridge, which opens in the centre to allow the passage 
of ships. The western shore of this Harbour is occupied by a Government railway- 
wharf. The opposite side is crowded with wharves and jetties. Several of the steam- 
boat companies have their head-quarters here, although the access by steep and narrow 
streets is very difficult, and a real inconvenience to the Harbour traffic. 

On the highest point of the Sydney ridge is the Fort Phillip reserve, on which is 





« -^j^-- 



ViiaJir. 



,_vit^v 



^•yl-T.T^lv 




LANE COVE RIVER. 



built the Observatory, and here, terminating our imaginary cruise, we may stand and 
take a general survey of the route traversed. There is, indeed, no one point from 
which Sydney Harbour can be entirely commanded, for its special characteristic is that 
it is not a bay, but a series of bays — bays on the north and bays on the south. 
Any one of its principal coves would make an ordinary haven, while their multiplicity 
gives a superabundance of accommodation let Sydney grow ever so great. The shore-line 



1 64 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

is more than a hundred miles in length. This Harbour, over which the citizens are 
naturally so enthusiastic, is to them and to their heirs a perpetual possession ; it is a reserve 
that can never be built upon ; it is a playground that can never be worn out ; a 
training-ground for all aquatic sports ; a school of seamanship that will count its pupils 
by the thousand. It gives to naval defence all that it can need, and to commerce more 
than it can use, while from childhood to old age, and from generation to generation, it 
is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. 

The City and Suburbs. 

The streets of Sydney are not as the streets of other New World cities. They are 
not laid out on a chess-board pattern, following some draftsman's predetermined plan, 
irrespective of the contour of the ground. George Street is, in fact, the survival of the 
primitive bush-track by which the bullock-drays entered and left the settlement. Its bends 
and its irregular width bear witness to this day to its origin. The other main track, 
Pitt Street, which lies roughly parallel to it, is straighter and more regular, but it was 
not at first continued through to Circular Quay. Sydney began on the western shore of 
the Cove, close to the present site of the Manly steamers' wharf, where the short street, 
still called Queen's Wharf, leads into George Street, and its topography will best be 
understood by studying the fall of the land at that point. The natural feature that deter- 
mined the selection of the site of the city was the Tank Stream, which furnished an 
immediate supply of fresh water — that prime essential to a young settlement. The supply 
was not very abundant, as the settlers soon found out, for the tide rose as far as Bridge 
Street, and above that the Stream had a length of only a few hundred yards ; but there 
was enough to begin with, and tanks were dug out to store that little. A reference to 
the plan of early Sydney will show that the course of the Tank Stream is nearly north. 
The track, which is now George Street, starting from the western side of the Cove, 
followed the bank of this creek, then over the ridge down the slope called Brickfield 
Hill into the valley of a water-course running into the head of Darling Harbour, and so 
on towards Parramatta. This was the first great artery of traffic. 

Beginning as Sydney did at the mouth of the Tank Stream, its earlier streets 
naturally occupied the two slopes leading down into the valley. On its western side the 
ground sloped upward to the ridge, and then over it . steeply down to the waters of 
Darling Harbour. On the eastern side the ground sloped up to another ridge, and down 
to the waters of Woolloomooloo Bay ; but on that side so much of the land was reserved 
for public uses that the city could not spread in that direction, and its earliest develop- 
ment was therefore on the portion lying between the Tank Stream and Darling Harbour. 
The highest land on this peninsula is that just abreast of the landing-place, and up 
the slope towards this height, now occupied by the Observatory, climbed some of the 
earlier settlers. On the top was erected one of the first windmills, the only remaining 
memorial of which is Windmill Street leading down from Lower Fort Street to the 
water. The roads were necessarily steep and irregular, and so they remain to this daj-, 
though the original -tracks have been in some places civilized into stair-ways cut in the 
rock. The primitive houses were perched wherever convenience dictated, and the arrange- 
ments were not at all adapted to modern notions of sanitary science or city engineering. 



77^5" CITY OF SYDNEY. 



165 




■A 






a: 
2 
< 

X 



The old sea-faring folk used to climbing had a fancy for this point of high land, for 
even when ashore they liked a sight of the blue water and the moving craft. 

The earliest private wharves were formed along the shore from Dawes' Point and 
round by Miller's Point, and the great knob of land which was thus half-encircled was 
a convenient dwelling-place for those who did not wish to go far from their ships or 



1 66 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Jh .f V^>-^ 




AN EAKLY BARRACK-VAN. 



their business. This part of Sydney, which is still known as " The Rocks," has a quaint 
Old World air about it. It has a suggestion of old Folkestone, with a touch of Wapping 
and a reminiscence of Poplar Those who are in search of primitive Sydney will find 
more of it here than anywhere else. What are now called hovels were once respectable 
tenements ; but in Upper and Lower F"ort Streets there are substantial houses, once the 
homes of well-to-do merchants and skippers. The great commercial buildings have since 
settled themselves in another direc- 
tion, in positions more central to 
business, and to which the access by 
road is easier. But old Sydney still 
remains very much as first fashioned, 
a little straightened and smoothened, 
but in its main outlines what it 
originally was. 

Of late years the neighbourhood 
of Lower George Street has become 
the favourite haunt of the Chinese 
immigrants, who naturally gravitated 

to the older and shabbier part of the town, and here their stores, their lodging-houses 
and their furniture-shops abound. It is half China-town, sprinkled with Caucasian trade- 
marks. Opium fumes are in the air, and indications also of the peculiar cookery of China. 
Mongolian wares are seen in the windows. In the open shops the Turanian is busy making 
and polishing furniture, and half-breed children play upon the steps. Signs and symptoms 
of fan-tan, lotteries and other games of chance may sometimes be noticed by the initiated, 
though the police occasionally make official raids upon these gambling establishments. The 
Chinese show unremitting industry, and yet afford a singular contrast to the smartness 
and enterprise of colonial commerce. Their quarter in Sydney is thoroughly intermixed 
with European establishments, and is by no means so exclusively national as the Chinese 
quarter in San Francisco, or even in some other Australian cities. 

The route from Lower George Street round to Miller's Point, by way of Dawes' 
Battery, was in the early days considered inconveniently circuitous, while to take laden 
drays over the height was out of the question. So a passage, known as the "Argyle 
Cut," was driven through the rock, the intersected streets being preserved by means of 
overhead bridges. This was a more important passage when first made than it is now, 
for before Circular Quay was improved by the Government the wharves and warehouses 
on the western side of the Point gave the principal accommodation to the shipping ; and 
even that accommodation was subject to one great drawback, namely, the steepness of 
all the roadways to the water's edge. The harbour-frontage is all that can be desired, 
but the access to it is very inferior. In the early days the streets were laid out on 
the natural gradients, for there were no funds available for expensive works and 
bullocks and horses were left to do the best they could. The " Druitt Street test" used 
to be the warranty given with a horse, for an animal that could draw a ton straight 
up from Darling Harbour into George Street was considered stanch. Since the 
commerce of Sydney has increased the inconvenient access to the wharves of Darling 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



167 



Harbour has been more and more a matter of complaint, and several have been the 
projects for making a grand reformation along the whole fore-shore by the construction 
of a continuous wharf, a new road and a railway. These, however, are at present only 
schemes, but some fine profile for the water-frontage may find its place in an illustrated 
Sydney of. the future. At present the old city maintains in this quarter its ancient 
form, varied only by the construction of longer and stronger jetties, and the erection of 
new, capacious and handsome warehouses. Great 
improvements have been made in this respect, 
but they leave unaltered all the defects of the 
primitive plan, and indeed increase the cost 
and difficulty of any comprehensive alterations. 
As the line of water-frontage to Darling 
Harbour runs nearly parallel to George Street, 
the intervening streets necessarily take the same 
general direction. The official loyalty of early 
days was very effusive, and constantly assumed 
the form of giving 
to places the titu- 
lar designations of "^ 






THE OLD WINDMILL AT MILLERS POINT. 








members of the reigning family. 
This tendency is seen in the names 
Sussex Street, Kent Street, Clarence 
Street and York Street, lying be- 
tween George Street and the water. 
The rugged contour of the original ground in this part of 
Sydney is still seen in the irregular way in which the houses 
are pitched. To improve the gradients the streets have in 
many places been cut down, and consequently every here and 

^ there may be seen houses perched on the rock ten or twenty 

_^ feet above the level of the pathway, and their front-doors are 

approached by cumbrous stone or wooden steps. Bit by bit, 
however, such memorials of old-time Sydney are disappearing. 
These streets are the favourite haunts of persons connected with the shipping, and 
especially of those engaged in the coasting and intercolonial trade. Produce-stores of 
every kind and size abound, into which are unloaded cargoes of lucerne hay from the 
Hunter River, maize from the coast farther north, potatoes from the south, and farm 
produce from Tasmania, New Zealand, Victoria and South Australia Crates of fowls. 



i68 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

baskets of eggs, sides of bacon, kegs of butter and every description of farm produce are 
exposed for sale. The locality is practically an open market, and the dealers, acting 
either as agents for their country consignors, or as speculators anxious to turn over 
their bargains quickly, are busy all day long selling to shop-keepers and private house- 
holders. The houses in the neighbourhood have been from the earliest days of the 
colony occupied by traders of this class, or by sea-faring people, stevedores, wharf- 
labourers, ships' carpenters and keepers of lodging-houses, with, of course, a due supply of 
public-houses and retail shops. But a great change is rapidly coming over this part of 
Sydney. Some of the most primitive and dilapidated tenements have been closed or 
pulled dov.'n by the orders of successive mayors, who periodically promenade the town, 
and condemn as unfit anything below the present standard of what is suitable for human 
habitation. Even where there has been no such municipal mandate the mere increase 
in the value of land has lead to the removal of many of the ancient structures, and 
the substitution of new and commodious stores. The business part of Sydney — practically 
a peninsula — is pinched in, and the rapid increase of commerce has created a demand 
for mercantile premises. Persons who cannot afford the high prices asked in George 
Street have sous^ht suitable sites in these back streets. Artisans tro out into the 
suburbs, to which there is now convenient access by boat, tram and railway, and ware- 
houses now rise where cottages once stood. 

Among the wharves, and nearly behind St. Philip's Church, were erected the first 
gas-works. The business of the establishment — still conducted by a company — has out- 
grown the cramped position which was ample for its first beginnings ; new and larger 
works have been constructed at Mortlake, on the Parramatta River, six miles from the 
centre of the city. On the top of the hill, looking down on the- site of the old 
gas-works, was built in the early days a naval hospital, in the solid heavy style of 
architecture which seems to have been favoured at that time. Many years ago it was 
turned into a model school, and is used for that purpose still. Another Government 
establishment, the Barracks, occupied a large area between George Street and York 
Street, but when, in course of time, the ground grew to be too valuable for this purpose it 
was given to the local Government on condition that new and larger barracks were 
built on the Paddington Road. Barrack Street, which connects George, York and 
Clarence Streets, is a reminiscence of the purpose to which the land was originally put. 
Wynyard Square was retained as a reserve when the old barrack-ground was subdivided 
into allotments, and still remains as one of the pleasant lungs of Sydney. Before it 
was improved it was a site on which the hustings for the elections for West Sydney 
were erected, and was the scene of many a fierce display of political oratory. The 
hu.stings having been transferred to the Town Hall enclosure, the .Square was railed in 
and planted with trees and flowers. The breaking up of the old I^arracks was a con- 
siderable advantage to the cit)-, because it made the business part of George Street 
on the west side continuous. 

The new shops built on the old barrack-ground, though now more than forty jears 
old, were at the time of their erection a great improvement to Sydney, and still 
contrast favourably with the shops on the opposite side. But farther up the street 
stands the new Post Office — one of the finest buildings in the city. Its main and 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



169 



longest fa9ade runs 
through from George to 
Pitt Street, and until 
recently looked upon a 
narrow conncctinL,'- lane, 
the frontages to the two 
main streets beincj com- 
paratively short ; how- 
ever, the ground occu- 
pied by the business 
premises opposite this 
facade has been resimied 
by the Government for 
the purpose of forming 
a public square. The 
Post Office is built of 
Pyrmont sandstone, but 







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the massive pillars supporting the long colonnade are of polished granite obtained from 
Australian quarries. From the centre of the building rises a handsome tower, the loftiest 



I70 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




in the city, and one of its finest architectural features. 
From the arcade of the Post Ofifice the eye of the \isitor 
is caught by two of the handsomest structures in Sydney; 
namely, the Mutual Fire Assurance Company's offices 
just completed at the corner of Wynyard Street, and 
the neo-Greek edifice of the Australian Joint Stock Bank 
at the corner of King Street, with a frontage to George 
Street. King Street is a little beyond the Post 
Office, and is a scene of busy traffic, leading up 



»tilli 1MU 3iWhmW«EaiJ 




GEORGE STREET FROM THE 

PARAPET OF THE 

POST OFFICE. 

as it does to the Court-house, 
and being also an omnibus 
route to Woolloomooloo. 
The high ground on the summit of this 
thoroughfare, on which it is intended to 
erect some grand public edifice, is at 
present occupied by inferior buildings. 
From King Street to Park Street 
George Street remains very much what 
it was fifty years ago, but every here and there 
shops of modern style are taking the place of the 
old buildings. At Park Street the ground reaches its 
greatest elevation, and here stand, side by side, the 
Town Hall and the Cathedral ; the former being built 
on the site of an old burying-ground. The Town Hall is 
an ambitious structure, but altogether too fiorid in its style 
of architecture. The Cathedral was planned fifty years ago, 

and is now too small ; but it is a good specimen of perpendicular Gothic, and contrasts 
not unfavourably with the Italian edifice by its side. They both stand central and 
dominant in the city — the street here having widened out to a hundred and fifty 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



171 



feet — and the grounds surrounding them 
are relieved by small shrubberies and lawns. 

Beyond the Cathedral George Street 
descends the slope of Brickfiekl Hill, the 
street continuing broad, though irregular 
in its alignment. It is a district of shops 
of the less fashionable order ; but at the 
foot of the hill on the Haymarket flat is 
the great establishment of Messrs. Anthony 
Hordern and Sons — a Sydney imitation of 
Whiteley's in London. From the Hay- 
market George Street rises steeply towards 
the Redfern Railway Station, before reach- 
ing which Pitt Street converges into it at 
a sharp angle. The tram-line, which forms 
the main artery of communication with the 
Railway .Station and the southern and 
western suburbs, is laid along Elizabeth 
Street from Hunter Street to the Hay- 
market, where it crosses Belmore Park in 
a diagonal direction, and follows the trend 
of Pitt Street into the broad plaza which 
crowns the rise in front of the Redfern 
Railway Station. 

Though running parallel to George 
Street, and at no great distance from it, 
Pitt Street was in the early days cut off 
by the Tank Stream, nor was it continued, 
as it is now, northward to the Quay, but 
turned off at Hunter Street. The mouth 
of the Tank Stream, in its natural forma- 
tion, opened out, and what is now known 
as Macquarie Place was once a water-side 
street following the direction of the east 
bank. It was not until after the flat 
ground at the mouth of the Stream was 
filled in that Pitt .Street was continued 
straight from Hunter .Street to the Circular 
Quay. The line of traffic, as thus com- 
pleted, not only gives a better gradient 
from the Quay all the way to the ridge 
which follows the alignment of Bathunst 
.Street, but it affords, in a very striking 
way, a close connection between the city 




THE SYDNEY POST OFFICE TOWER. 



172 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

and the ships, for looking down Pitt Street the masts of the great vessels are seen, 
and behind them the green hills of the North Shore. " The ships seem lying in the 
streets" is sometimes the remark of visitors, and they do lie actually alongside the 
roadway, for the western side of the Quay is only a continuation of it, and the traveller 
is driven in his hansom from his hotel to the gangway of the ocean liner, which hauls 
off from the wharf and goes straight away to sea. Walking up this street from the 
wharf the visitor notes on both sides the offices of steam-ship companies, shipping and 
insurance agents, importers and brokers. 

At the intersection of Bridge Street is the Exchange, erected by a mercantile 
corporation on a site granted by the Government. It was built many years ago, and 
has answered its purpose ; but though a fine structure it is now dwarfed by the taller 
premises surrounding it. A large hotel stands in the rear, and is part of the property ; 
it having been found that luncheon was a necessary sequel to the exchange hour. 
Handsome offices occupy both sides of the street beyond this point ; the premises 
built for the Australian Mutual Provident Society, the Bank of New Zealand and the 
Pacific Insurance Company being prominent for their architectural merit. At one corner 
of Hunter Street stands the office of the Sydney Morning Herald — the oldest and 
largest newspaper in the colony. Opposite are the newly-built premises of the Union 
Bank, which fronts the large freestone building of the Empire Hotel. From this 
point to King Street the new buildings are lofty, the value of the land compelling 
proprietors to find in height compensation for narrowness. Among the stone structures 
Vickery's Buildings and the handsome offices of Messrs. Dalton are the most striking, 
while in brick and cement the stores of Messrs. Hoffnung tower over all others which 
stand by their side, and even dwarf the Pitt Street facade of the Post Office. 
At . the corner of King Street is Beach's Hotel, so named after the champion 
oarsman of the world, and fronting it is a fine freestone building, the pediments of 
which are ornamented with allegorical groups in bronze. At the intersection of Market 
Street is the long range of Messrs. Farmer's drapery establishment, opposite which 
is the newest and largest theatre in Sydney. A little farther on, and before reaching 
the Mechanics' School of Arts, is one of the largest and handsomest of the many 
arcades which are characteristic of Sydney. The School of Arts was established in this 
quarter many years ago, and still holds its old position, though reconstructed internally 
to meet its growing needs. This portion of Pitt Street is chiefly characterized by 
horse-bazaars, furniture-rooms and the shops of niiscellaneous trades, though a little 
farther on new and handsome structures are rapidly rising, and the locality is undergoing 
a thorough transformation ; but over the Bathurst Street ridge, and descending towards the 
Haymarket valley, it still wears a good deal of its ancient character. 

The Tank Stream was the early dividing line between East and West Sydney. A 
bridge thrown over it at high-water mark was the first connecting link between the two 
parts, and originated Bridge Street, which by a happy accident is one of the few 
broad thoroughfares of the city, though unfortunately it is not in line with the equally 
broad thoroughfare of Charlotte Place on the opposite side of George Street. But in 
those early days hardly anyone seems to have thought of laying out the city on a 
symmetrical plan. Bridge Street now contains some fine mercantile buildings, its proxi- 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



'73 




174 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

mity to the shipping as well as to the commercial centre making it a good position for 
offices. On the eastern side of the old Stream, which is now a covered sewer, begins a 
quarter much occupied with Government offices, and this characteristic feature is a survival 
from the earliest days. When Governor Phillip first landed, his canvas hut was put up 
on the eastern side of the Stream, while the convicts were debarked on the other ; and 
thus, while commercial Sydney made its start from the latter point, official Sydney had 
its centre near the Governor's first residence. Traces of this are still to be seen in the 
direction of the streets, which radiate outwards from this old central point ; O'Connell 
Street and Spring Street going towards the Stream, and Bent Street sloping upwards in 
an opposite direction towards Macquarie Street. An early Government House was built 
here, and here too stands the obelisk from which the length of all the streets and roads 
in the colony is measured. Official Sydney has clung to this locality ever since, although 
it is no longer central. The ground has become very valuable for commercial purposes, but 
the new and magnificent buildings that have lately been erected, as well as the proximity 
of the vice-regal residence, seem likely to fix this permanently as the Government quarter. 

The Government Reserve originally came down to Macquarie Place, and of this the 
obelisk triangle is a small remnant. At the corner of this little patch of green grass and 
shady trees stands the statue of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, the first of the city merchants 
thus honoured, and one who well deserved the distinction. His name has already been 
mentioned in connection with the great wool-store on the Circular Quay ; it was he, 
too, who first established a private graving-dock and the great engineering works 
necessary for the repair of ships visiting the Port. He is also identified with rural enter- 
prise in a great cheese-farm at Bodalla on the southern coast, while for years he 
laboured under the greatest discouragements at working out the problem of freezing meat 
— a problem successfully solved just as his career closed. His name was prominent 
in almost every department of industry ; he was a strong and liberal supporter of 
religion, art, science and culture, and had a deep sympathy with everything that could 
promote the welfare of the .great mass of the people. His life and career won for him 
the affectionate respect of his contemporaries, and when he died the movement to honour 
his memory was spontaneous. 

On the side of the thoroughfare facing Mort's Statue is the handsome new building 
erected for the Lands Department, and farther up on the same side are the offices for 
the Colonial Secretary and the Minister for Public Works. At the northern corner is 
the Treasury, a handsome building, though it looks small now in comparison to the more 
recent and stately piles in its neighbourhood. A vacant space in the rear of the Treasury 
has been turned into a temporary tram-terminus, which by no means improves the general 
appearance of the street ; but the engineers seized upon it as the only piece of ground 
suitable for their purpose, and it is a scene of restless activity from morning till night. 
The area is insufficient, but by dint of management the tram-cars are incessantly entering, 
shunting and departing from early dawn till midnight. These street tram-ways are an 
institution in Sydney, and though everybody condemns their ugliness and admits their 
danger, the public could not now do without them. The first was constructed in the 
year of the International Exhibition, to take travellers from the Redfern Railway Ter- 
minus to a point near the Macquarie Street entrance to the Domain. It was found so 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



»75 




convenient antl so profitable that 
the Government was besieged 
^ ' with entreaties to extend the 

system into the various suburbs. 
This has been done till the profit has disappeared but the convenience to suburban residents 
has been immense, and until suburban railways are made Sydney will not part with its 
tram-ways. The streets are really too narrow for the system, and the terminus is altogether 
too cramped, but the Government ha's to do the best it can. Horse tram-ways would be 
unequal to the traffic on such gradients, except on some of the branch lines ; on the 
steep incline of the North Shore a cable tram-way has been successfully established. 

Bridge Street terminates opposite the entrance gate to Government House, making 
thus a bold and handsome approach to the vice-regal residence. Macquarie Street is an 



176 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

eastern boundary to this part of the city, one side of it being all public reserve ; in 
fact, it was partly carved out of the original Domain, which was pushed back to this 
line. The northern end is almost wholly devoted to wool-stores, which have one face to 
it and another to the Circular Quay. South of the lodge-gates Macquarie Street is 
devoted to private residences, and makes a street-front equal in beauty to that of any 
city in the world. The windows of the houses look out on the Domain and the 
Harbour beyond, the balconies commanding all the moving panorama of the daily ileet of 
incoming and outgoing vessels, while the sea breeze comes up fresh and cool ; indeed, 
it would be difficult to find anywhere so charming a residential street so close to the 
centre of the commercial operations of a great city. 

The original Macquarie Street began at the corner of Bent Street, where stands the 
Free Public Library. In the Domain are the Parliament Houses, the old Infirmary 
and the Mint. The first-named is a very plain building, which has been added to from 
time to time to meet the demand for increased accommodation, and is therefore an 
architectural jumble. Designs for a grand structure have been prepared, but Parliament 
has been more liberal to the Civil Service than to itself, and is still content with its 
old quarters. The front of the Infirmary was pulled down some years ago, having 
become unfit for hospital purposes. Plans for a new and costly structure were prepared 
and partly carried out, when with a change of Administration came a change of policy. 
Objections were made to putting a large hospital so close to the populous parts of the 
city, and the work of building was suspended. The Mint was an adaptation of an old 
building, and the front is in the antiquated style of the Macquarie age of architecture. 

The end of Macquarie Street opens out into the broad plaza facing Hyde Park. 
The old and ugly Immigration Barracks occupy a site on the east — a noble and 
commanding position, on which a new public building is to be erected. On the other 
side stands St. James's Church — a characteristic red-brick building of the okl style — and 
next to it is the Supreme Court, also plain and dingy, soon to be superseded by some- 
thing more befitting the site. Next to the Court, and facing P21izabeth Street, is the 
Registrar-General's Office, where are kept all the archives relating to births, deaths and 
marriages, all statistical documents, and the deeds and ledgers connected with the regis- 
tration of titles to land. Macquarie Street was formerly continued through Hyde Park, but 
the latter was closed and turned into a broad promenade, the street traffic being deflected 
to the east along College Street past St. Mary's Cathedral, which, though still incomplete, 
is the finest piece of ecclesiastical architecture in Sydney. In a line with this specimen 
of Gothic — though separated from it by intervening park-land in which is situated the 
Sydney Bowling-green — is the Museum, an imposing structure in a purely Grecian style 
and on a commanding site. It stands at the corner of Park and College Streets. The 
Boomerang Road, the route followed by the 'buses running to Woolloomooloo, begins at St. 
Mary's Cathedral and ends at the foot of William Street, which ceases at this point to bear 
the name of Park Street. This is the great artery of traffic for Woolloomooloo and Dar- 
linghurst, and the omnibus route for the water-side suburbs beyond. The road following 
the old steep and inconvenient gradient runs down into the valley, and, passing the William 
Street Post Office, still more precipitou.sly up to the ridge beyond. On its summit the road 
breaks into six branches ; namely, the Darlinghurst Road, Victoria Street South, William 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



^77 



I 




Street South, Bayswater Road, Macleay Street and Victoria Street North, and these serve as 
the arteries to the southern and eastern suburbs. In the early days the ridge upon which 
William Street terminates was faced by a cliff, a portion of which still remains, forming 



!78 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



one of the curious features of this part of Sydney. Victoria Street North runs along 
the top of the old cliff, the back windows of the houses on its western side looking 
down upon the mass of dwellings in the valley 
below. Streets up this steep cliff there are none, 
but flights of stone steps give a pathway for 
foot-passengers. From the top of these stairs a 
good view is obtained of a portion of the city, 
for the eye ranges over the whole of Woolloo- 
mooloo Bay, up the western slope of the Domain 
to Hyde Park and the lofty buildings beyond. 
The valley of Woolloomooloo itself is the 
least pleasing part of the prospect, for it is a 
poor quarter, though not one of the poorest. 
The main streets are laid out straight, and of a 
fair width, but subdivisions, carried out by private 




PITT STREET LOOKIXC SOUTH. 



individuals before the present stringent law regulated such matters, have multiplied narrow 
streets and lanes, in which rows of squalid tenements are huddled together. On the elevated 
ridge of Darlinghurst the houses are generally of a superior class, and the principal street 
on the summit, Macleay Street, leading to Pott's Point, contains several terraces of fair- 
sized houses, and many handsome detached residences surrounded with beautiful gardens 
and well-kept grounds. To the south Victoria Street leads past St. John's Church — the 
graceful spired tower of which is a really fine specimen of Gothic architecture — on to the 
Gaol, whose grim bleak walls are scored and scarred with the cyphers of their convict hewers. 



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THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



'79 



Over the ricltre Bayswater Road makes a steep descent into the valley of Rushcut- 
ters' Hay. This, farther on, Ijecomes the Main South Head Road, and one of the 
favourite drives out of ihc city, leading as it does past the suburbs of Darlinjr Point. 
Double Bay antl Rose Bay. The Old South Head Road, on the versant of which those 
suburbs lie, runs on the rido^e in conformity with the primitive colonial practice : to keep 
clear of the necessity for bridges being the great aim of the early road engineers. It 
was the task of a later day to face such constructive works and to open out improved 
routes. Tliis old road follows the line of the divide between the water-shed of Fort 
Jackson and that of Botany Bay ; the topography of the eastern suburbs is understood 
at once when this line is traced, with its lateral spurs running northward and terminating 
as promontories in the Harbour. The western end of this divide — on the western point 
of which stands the Town Hall — is really the city ridge already referred to, that sepa- 
rated the head of the Tank Stream from the creek flowing into Darling Harbour. ■ This 
ridge, following the line of Bathurst Street, and crossing the southern end of Hyde 
Park diagonall)-, continues up Oxford Street to the Gaol, through Paddington to 
W'averley, at which point it trends south, dividing the water falling into the ocean from 
that running towards the old Water Reserve, and passing through the suburb of Upper 
I-iandwick continues to the North Head of Botany. This is the backbone of all the 
land to the eastern side of Sydney. 

On its southern slope lies that sandy space which for many years has furnished 
the water-supply of the metropolis, and which is one of the most remarkable city 
reservoirs in the world. It is really a great slope formed by the action of the southerly 
wind durino- unnumbered a^es, blowing up the sand a<rainst the face of the southern 
ridge. The rain-water that falls upon this sandy area slowly percolates through it, and 
finally oozes out into the bed of a creek which the water has formed for itself. The 
sand acts like an immense sponge, from which the water drains out slowly. The first 
attempt to supply the city from this source was made at the instance of Mr. Busby, 
who found, near the head of the creek, a lagoon then known by the name of Lachlan's 
.Swamp, the elevation of which was above that of Hyde Park. He persuaded the 
Government to let him make a tunnel under the ridge from the swamp to the park, a 
work which, owing to the indolence and incompetence of the convict workmen, he 
carried out with verj- great difficulty ; but it answered its purpose, and was an immense 
boon to the citizens of that day, who had iiecome severely pressed for want of water, 
the Tank Stream ha\ing proved wholly insufficient, and also getting very much polluted 
by the increasing population on its banks. 

I^usby's Bore, as this tunnel was called, has with occasional repairs lasted to this 
day, and still partially supplies the lower levels of the city by gravitation. Its utility 
was so great that a closer examination was made of the whole sandy swamp, and when 
an additional supply was required a pumping-engine was erected at the mouth of the 
creek where the water runs into Botany Bay, a line of pipes six miles in length being 
laid to a brick reservoir constructed in Crown Street, Surry Hills. All the wool-washing 
establishments were removed from the line of the creek, and a puddle-wall was erected 
across the outlet. Subsequently broad sand-dams, with wooden by-washes, were built 
down its course, partly to store the water, and still more to hold it back so as to 



i8o 



.-/ i 'S TRALASJA ILL USTRA THP. 




keep the land satu- 
rated as much as 
possible. This sand- 
basin thus treated 
has never been abso- 
lutely dry. Several 
times the citizens 
have been put on 
short allowance till 
rain fell and re- 
plenished the reser- 
voirs, but there has 
always been enough 
for the absolute 
necessities of the 
population. The 
water, too, is of very 
good quality, being 
rain-water filtered 
through sand, and 
the advantage of its 
being thus stored, 

instead of in an open reservoir, is that it is less subject to evaporation ; nor is it exposed 
to any contaminating influence. Hut the fact that the water is hidden has been a constant 
puzzle to visitors. When asking to be shown the city water-suppK', and on being 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



iJJi 



pointed to a small, feebly-running creek and a shallow engine-ppnd, they have derisively 
ejaculated, " Why, there is not a week's supply." And it is quite true that very often 
there is not so much as a week's supply visible on the surface ; but it continually 
oozes out, and in very dry seasons the percolation has been assisted by cutting ditches 
into the hills. 

The Botany supply became, however, unequal to the wants of the population, and the 
water from the Nepean is now the principal reliance of the city ; but the Botany sand- 
slope served the purposes of Sydney for about half a century. Its peculiar character 
and value were not at first understood, and it was condemned as insufficient for very 
many years before it really proved so. It was only by slow degrees that its extra- 
ordinary capability was duly appreciated ; and it is still one of the curiosities of the 
place, and a study for hydraulic engineers. 

The new system for supplying the city is on a larger scale, and follows the 
customary lines. The water is intercepted at a distance of sixty miles or thereabouts 
from Sydney, in deep gorges 
in sandstone country ; the 
channels are dammed, and 
the water is then diverted 
through two long tunnels to 
a point from which it can be 
conveyed in an open cutting, 
by a steadily-descending gra- 
dient to a large reservoir 
constructed at Prospect, about 
four miles to the south-west of 
Parramatta. No considerable 
quantity can be stored at the 
sources, because the character 
of the country does not admit 
of the formation of any capa- 
cious basin, and therefore the 
water has to be collected at 
the most suitable place that 
can be found on the line of 
route. F"rom the Prospect 
Reservoir it is conveyed in 
an open cutting to a point 
about ten miles from Sydney, 
and for the remainder of the 
distance in pipes, through 
which it is delivered by gravitation into a large brick tank at Surrj- Hills. For the 
supply of the more elevated suburbs water is pumped into a second tank at Paddington, 
and into a third, at a still greater elevation, at Waverley. The cost of this scheme, by 
the time it is finally completed, will be about two million sterling. 




"""••liiiiiiiil 



MURT's ST.\TUE, MACgUARIE PLACE. 



1 82 A USTRALASfA ILL USTRA TED. 

The backbone ridge, which we have already described as running eastward from 
Sydney, is the principal high-road to the suburbs in that direction, and makes also the- 
general course of the great under-ground drain, the Cloaca Maxima, constructed to carr\- 
the Sydney sewage to the sea. The primitive drainage system of the city, like its 
early streets, naturally followed the contour of the countr)', and the sewers were all 
emptied into the Harbour. The engineers thought Port Jackson large enough to swallow 
any amount of sewage and show itself none the worse ; but this has proved a great 
mistake. The water near the outfalls has been made filthy, and the fore-shores in the 
neighbourhood have become foul with jjutrescent slime. After much study and consulta- 
tion it was resolved to construct a main outlet to the ocean, and the place was lixed 
at Ben Buckler, a rocky projection north of Hondi Beach. This conduit will drain all 
but a zone of land forming the coast-belt, which has to be dealt with separately. The 
effect of this great drainage system is alread)- proving beneficial, and the waters of the 
Harbour have now regained something of their pristine purity. The portion on the 
southern side of Sydney which cannot be drained by the Cloaca Maxima, has its 
discharge on a sandy tongue of land on the shore of Botany Bay — a large portion of 
the southern side of Surry Hills being thus drained. 

This suburb stands upon a plateau spreading out on the southern side of the main 
ridge. Shea's Creek, corresponding in its character to the creek on the Water Reserve, 
and really forming part of the same general sandy ijasin, runs into the mouth of Cook's 
River, and is the natural drainage channel for this part of Sydney. Had the creek been 
reserved early enough it would have increased the area of water catchment for the city 
supply, but it was hopelessly befouled by wool-washing works and tanneries. The supply 
of fresh water obtainable from the sand has caused many manufacturing industries to 
settle along the line of road. Some of the ground is too swampy for anything but 
market-gardens, and their Chinese cultivators fully appreciate the value of the water. The 
shortest road to Botany Bay, now also supplied with a tram-way, runs over this gently- 
sloping and nearly level land to the south of .Sydney. The general character of the 
ground on the north and south of the eastern ridge is very different. On the northern 
side are bold spurs with deep valleys between them ; on the southern is the sandy 
slope falling into flat ground towards Botany Bay. The southern side is not much 
occupied, because so large a portion is reserved for the water-suppl\-, the Race-course 
and Moore Park. It is principally along the Waterloo Estate that population has 
settled, but some of the ground is low and difficult to drain, and it is to be regretted 
that it was not included in the earliest reserves. The shore is the northern coast of 
Botany Bay, which, though low and flat, is a favourite holiday resort. 

Standing on the western edge of the Surry Hills plateau, the spectator looks down 
upon Redfern and the Railway Station. The site for what is now the centre of a 
very busy traffic was originally selected simply because there happened to be a vacant 
piece of ground there called the Cleveland Paddocks, and economy rather than con- 
venience was the first consideration. The Railway Station was almost out of town when 
first built, but the suburbs have now so thickened aroimd it that it is central to the 
population. The line of the first engineer was soon criticized by his successor, who 
pointed out that in a sea-port the railway should be brought into close connection with 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



L83 



the wharves; a branch line was therefore made from the Station-yard down to the 
Pyrmont side of Darling Harbour. But the purpose of this line has remained largely 
undeveloped, th<- traffic between the Station and the ships being mainly conducted by 
drays. Most of the incoming goods go straight to the 
wholesale warehouses, where they are unpacked and sorted 
and then repacked for country delivery. A comparatively 
small portion of what is landed on the wharves 



^' .;. 




MACQUARIE STREET FROM UKIDGE STREET. 

unbroken parcels into the country. So too with the 
produce coming down from the interior. Most of it 
has to be classified, examined and exposed for sale in 
Sydney, and only a portion is tlestined to go straight 
from the railway to the ship's hold. As therefore the 
greater part of the commerce of the port in and out 
is filtered through the city, and a breaking of bulk has 
, ' to take place, the fact tliat there is a gap between 

the Railway Station and the water-side has not been 
so great an inconvenience. But the need of close connection is becoming more and 
more felt, and the (iovernment, with the view of making there an extensive railway- 
wharf, and erecting warehouses for stores and produce, has resumed a large area of 
land on the P\rinont side of Darling Harbour. In building in this locality the Govern- 
ment has been anticipated by Goldsbrough and Company, who have alreadj' erected a 
large and massi\e stone store, into which wool can be delivered direct from the railway- 
trucks. It is the largest building in this quarter, and its long imposing front is the most 
conspicuous feature in the landscape when Pyrmont is viewed from the Sydney side. 



1 84 AUSTRALASIA J LLUSTRATf.D. 

As far as the passenger traffic is concerned the position of the Railwa) Station, 
just beyond the point where Pitt and George Streets converge, is not inconvenient for 
travellers from the country, who, encumbered by luggage, take cabs to their hotels, or 
to any of the suburbs to which they may be bound. But the city and suburban traffic 
has increased, and the inconvenience of the railway terminating a mile short of the 
business centre has been more and more complained of. Many yea^rs ago a tram-way worked 
by horse-power, which proved a decided convenience, was laid down in Pitt Street by 
George Francis Train. The tram-service, however, being a great interruption to the 
ordinary traffic of a street so narrow and so busy, and the complaints being so loud 
and general, the Government was forced to take up the line, and daily travellers had 
once more to have recourse to omnibuses until the revival of the tram-way experiment 
in 1879, to meet the needs of the International Exhibition. Since then the tram-way 
has acted as the last link of the railway-service. But even this does not satisfy the 
demands of the rapidly-increasing number of suburban travellers, and an extension of 
the railway itself into the city has recently been proposed, and is now under consideration. 

The suburban business did not at all enter into the plans of the earl) projectors 
of the railway, who were thinking only of opening up the interior and bringing down 
the produce of the country — indeed, for some years after the railway had been at work 
there was but little addition to the number of residents along the line. The localities 
served b\' the Harbour steam-boats, and those accessible by a short omnibus ride, were 
the favourite places of residence. But owing to the increase of population, and to the 
desire of many people to get away from the relaxing influence of the sea air, the 
railway was more and more used by those whose business took them dail)' to the city. 
During the last ten years the development of the suburban traffic has been unexpectedly 
great. Stations have been multiplied, and now all the way from Sydney to Parramatta 
there is one continuous series of townships, the population as far as Homebush being 
thickly settled. 

The country passed through by this line is for the most part gently undulating, 
but with no great variety of scenery. The most elevated ground along the route lies 
pretty close to the city, the country be)ond Petersham falling gradually to the west. 
In laying out the railway suburbs no general plan has been followed, every proprietor 
subdividing his land according to his own fancy or interest. The separate municipalities 
have accordingly had to deal with the problems of streets and sewerage as l)est they 
could, and have found the task rather difficult. When each house stood in its own 
ground sanitary questions did not arise ; but the increase in the value of land, causing 
subdivision into small allotments, has so altered this state of things, that owing to 
imperfect drainage the death-rate is now greater outside the city than within its 
boundaries. The older western suburbs lie along the road to Parramatta, and these 
have now grown greatl)' in consequence of their being served by tram-ways — such as 
the Glebe, Forest Lodge, Camperdown, Leichhardt and Annandale. 

At a point beyond Homebush, about eight miles from the city, the Corporation has 
constructed large yards, where sales of cattle and sheep are held, most of the live-stock 
being now brought into Sydney by railway. The Abattoirs are at Glebe Island, on the 
eastern shore of the Balmain Peninsula, five miles distant from the yards. This is 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



•85 



admitted to be an unsatisfactory arrangement, 
and the Government has erected large meat- 
sheds provided with refrigerating rooms at a 
railway siding at Pyrmont. This has been done 
with a view to encourage the kilHng of cattle 
in the country, so as to sjave the animals the 
long and deteriorating journey, and bring the 
meat into the city in better condition. Should 
this system be largely 
developed the impor- 
tance of the city sale- 
yards will be greatly 
diminished. 

Farther along the 
railway line is situated 
the great cemetery of 
Rookwood, a veri- 
table city of the dead, 
and between this and 
Parramatta are 
several manufacturinpf 
establishments — the 
largest of which is 
that at C 1 )• d e of 
Hudson Brothers, 
who migrated from 
town to get the ad- 
vantage of space. 
The traffic on the 
present line proving 
too great for the 
accommodation fur- 
nished, a double line 
from Sydney to Par- 
ramatta is now- being- 
constructed, a work which when completed will involve the expenditure of several millions. 

In addition to the original railway from Sydney to Parramatta two other lines have 
lately been constructed, and these are creating new suburban districts. The first is the 
South Coast Line, which, crossing the George's River, climbs the high land beyond, and 
runs through somewhat rugged and picturesque country- to Wollongong. At Waterfall 
Station, twenty miles from Sydney, this line reaches an elevation of seven hundred and 
twenty feet. The other railway, which acts as a suburban outlet, is the line connecting 
Sydney with Newcastle. It turns off to the north, eight miles from Sydney, and crossing 
the Parramatta River climbs the slopes on the northern side through the pretty village 




A CLIFF-FACE STAIR-WAV, 
DARLING HURST. 



i86 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

of Ryde, working up on to the ridge, along which it continues till it descends to the 
Hawkesbury River at Peat's Ferry. At Hornsby, twenty-one miles from Sydney, this 
line attains the height of five hundred and ninety-two feet. Both these new railways 
give the benefit of elevation within a few miles of the city, accompanied by a drier 
and more bracing air. A great variety of climate is thus obtainable within a short 
radius, and as tastes and constitutions vary this is no small advantage. 

All the railways converge into the Redfern Station, the area of which is becoming 
too small to accommodate the trafftc. In order partially to relieve it, the Government 
purchased, a mile from the city terminus, a large estate at Eveleigh, where extensive 
workshops and engine-sheds have been erected, and where all the railway stores are 
kept. Thus for a mile or two out of Sydney the line runs almost continuously through 
a busy railway-yard. 

In common with all the other colonial capitals Sydney is the seat of the central 
Government. The people in this respect have followed the example of the mother- 
country rather than that of America, and the metropolis is the centre of politics as 
well as of commerce. This was inevitable in early days, when the means of communica- 
tion were very poor, and hitherto there has been no disposition to alter the established 
practice. The Governor's residence, the seat of Parliament and the centre of administra- 
tive action are therefore in the metropolis, and though this arrangement has its 
conveniences it tends to give the city preponderant influence, for nearly one-third of the 
population is gathered in the metropolitan county. New South Wales would be better 
balanced if it had more large local centres; but this can only arise out of a greater 
development of natural resources. 

The local administration is in the hands of a council of aldermen, who elect the 
Mayor. Half a century ago the citizens became dissatisfied with the ordinary municipal 
system, which was therefore exchanged for a paid commission ; but after a short experience 
of this arrangement they returned to the old-fashioned custom, and have adhered 
to it ever since. The gross city revenue from all sources is nearly four hundred 
thousand pounds annually, including an endowment from the Government ; the yearly 
value of the city property is over two millions sterling. The population within the city 
limits is about one hundred and twenty-five thousand; that of the immediate suburbs is 
larger, the total population of the whole metropolitan area being close upon three hun- 
dred thousand. Each separate suburb has its own municipal system, but the want of 
union is increasingly felt, especially in connection with sanitary arrangements. The new 
sewerage and water-works systems will remain in the hands of the Government till their 
completion, but it is contemplated to appoint a Metropolitan Board of Works to deal 
with all matters that are common to the city and suburbs. 

The narrowness of the streets and the concentration of traffic on them has made 
their maintenance a difficult task. The ordinary macadam wears out very fast, and 
several varieties of asphalt roadway have been tried, though without success in the 
principal streets, where even bluestone cubes do not last long. But at length, after 
several experiments, wooden pavements made of brick-shaped blocks have been found to 
be very durable. Several varieties of colonial hardwood have been subjected to experi- 
ment, those that have proved the most suitable being blue-gum, black-butt, spotted-gum 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



187 




A GLIMPSE OF SVDiNEV 1- KUM DAKLINGHUKST. 



and tallow-wood. This new method of road-making is expensive in the first instance, but 
the economy in maintenance is very great, the wooden roadways proving tough and durable. 

The licensed vehicles are under the management of a Transit Commission. There is 
one omnibus company, which commands the business on the principal streets ; the 
accommodation is excellent and the fares are low. On several other roads the omnibuses are 
managed by private speculators. The characteristic conveyance of Sydney is the hansom- 
cab, there being only a few two-horse vehicles. These cabs, mostly owned by their drivers, 
are of excellent quality, equal in general equipment to those of any city in the world. 

Considering the extremely inflammable materials of which many of the Sydney buildings 
are composed, particularly those in the metropolitan suburbs, the small proportion of fires 



1 88 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



is somewhat remarkable. The Fire Brigade Agency has lately been re-organized, and a 
Metropolitan Brigade has been appointed, under the control of an officer who is also the 
Superintendent of all Sydney Fire Brigades, volunteer or otherwise. The system is 
jointly subsidized by the Government, the municipal councils and the insurance companies. 
The temporary head fire-station is in Bathurst Street, and its apparatus and general 
equipment are highly creditable. The volunteer system has not been found to work 
satisfactorily, as the members are not sufficiently under control or amenable to discipline ; 
but during the year 1885 a sum of two thousand five hundred pounds was voted by the 
Fire Brigades Board to the volunteer companies for the year's services. At the Board's 
temporary central office the telephone system is fairly effective, the various branches of 
the Metropolitan Brigade, volunteer companies and police stations being connected. At 
most of the street-corners alarm-boxes have been fixed, and the sjstem will be gradually 
extended throughout the city and suburbs. 

Sydney is well provided with charitable institutions. The new Prince Alfred Hospital, 
a detached building in the University Reserve, was planned after an exhaustive exami- 
nation of the best models in FLurope 
and America. It is in a healthy position, 
away from the densely-populated part of 
the town. The original funds were raised 
by private subscription, but the greater 
part of the money spent upon the build- 
ing has been furnished by Government. 
The management is in the hands of a 
joint committee, nominated by the sub- 
scribers and the Government respectively. 
All the administrative arrangements are 
excellent, and the patients enjoy not only 
comfort but luxury. The situation is 
close to the Medical School, and the 
clinical instruction is under the general 
supervision of the University Senate. 
The old Infirmary, now called the Sydney 
Hospital, is still carried on, though under 
the disadvantages attendant on an incom- 
plete building. It is, however, conve- 
niently situated for cases of accident 
arising among the shipping, or at the 
northern end of the city, and its wards 
are generalh' full. It has a special and 
detached department for ophthalmic cases. 
St. \'incent's Hospital in Victoria Street, 
on the heights of Darlinghurst, is a Roman Catholic institution, and though its accommo- 
dation is limited it is excellently conducted. The administration is of course denomina- 
tional, but the beds are open to sufferers without distinction of creed. At the Glebe 




ST. JOHNS CHURCH, DARLINGHURST. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



189 



\ 




•A 

O 

< 



< 






Point is the Children's Hospital, to which the Government contributes, though the 
management is exclusively in the hands of a committee appointed by the subscribers. 
The Benevolent Asylum, partly supported by private contributions, though mainly dependent 



igo 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



on the Government, deals directly with a large amount of casual poverty ; it distri- 
butes outdoor relief after making all enquiries possible under the circumstances ; it has 
a maternity hospital, and its doors are open at all times to take in the waifs and strays 
who may fall into the hands of the police. The care of destitute children was for many 
years attended to by the Randwick Asylum, an institution which originated in private 

philanthropy, but which gradually 
came to depend mainl)- on public 
funds — a tendency common to all 
the charitable institutions of the 
colony, which look parth' to private 
and partly to public resources ; the 
only exceptions being those cases 
in which the Government limits its 
bpunty strictly to a pound for every 
pound privately subscribed. In addi- 
tion to the Randwick Asylum there 
were for many years a Protestant 
and a Catholic orphan school at 
Parramatta, each supported b)- the 
Government ; but of late years the 
public policy has undergone a change. 
The experiment of boarding out 
children was undertaken tentatively 
by a few ladies, in whose hands 
the Government placed a small sum 
of money for the purpose. The 
experiment proved so successful 
that the Government adopted the 
arrangement officiall)'. All the State 
children are now boarded out, and 
Government assistance has been withdrawn from the orphan and destitute asylums. But 
the Randwick Asylum still continues its charitable work, though dependent on its private 
resources. There are also in Sydney two soup-kitchens, two female refuges and the 
Charity Organization Society, which does its utmost to make enquiries before giving 
relief. In addition to this all the churches have their detached organizations for relieving 
the poor and destitute. As a general check upon the abuses of the charitable institutions, 
the Government employs an officer called the Inspector of Charities, who has the right 
of entry and inspection wherever public money is granted, and whose duty it is to see 
that the money is properly .spent, and that mendicity is not encouraged by philanthropy. 
The primary schools are maintained at the expense of the Government. The more 
modern buildings are architecturally good, and have been carefully designed in the light 
of a large experience. It is difficult in a clo.sely-packed city to secure any large area 
for playgrounds, but as much has been done in this respect as was practicable, and in 
every case covered sheds are provided, so as to give the children protection from the 




THE GLEBE PRESBVTEKIAN CHURCH 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



IQI 




TH1-: ENTRANCE TO A STATE SCIIOOU 



weather, and to admit also of classes being held 

out of doors. In addition to the public schools 

the Roman Catholics have also several excellent 

private schools. 

Under the care of the Government there is 

also a large technical school, in which most of 

the lectures are delivered in the evening. This 

institution, previously supervised by a board, is 

intended to give instruction to artisans, especially 

the young, in the theory as well as in the practice 

of their respective trades. More than a thousand 

students are already in attendance at the different 

classes, and the number is rapidly increasing. In 

place of the cumbrous premises used at present, 

which are for the most part rented, and since the 

Department of Public Instruction has assumed the 

sole control, there is being erected a large and 

commodious college fitted with all the most ad- 
vanced and modern scientific and educational 

appliances. This institution will occupy a central site at Ultimo, a suburb immediately 

adjoining the Railway Station, and within five minutes' walk of the suburban trains. 

The Government has also a High School in the city, close to Hyde Park. Admis- 
sion is by examination ; the education is not gratuitous, but the fees are low. The 

school is intended principally for the more 
promising children from the public schools, and 
is intended to facilitate their preparation for the 
University. The public Grammar School is on 
the opposite side of the Park and adjoins the 
Museum. It gets from the Government the use 
of the building and an annual endowment of 
fifteen hundred pounds ; it has accommodation 
for four hundred boys. The situation is con- 
veniently central, but the premises, though 
largely altered, are old-fashioned, and the area 
for recreation is limited. As an educational 
institution this school has been very successful, 
and has sent to the University many prizemen. 
The Sydney Public Library, which has 
recently undergone complete and thorough reno- 
vation, is at the corner of Bent Street and 
Macquarie Street. The institution was originally 
a private .subscription library, which embar- 
rassed itself by an undue expenditure in 
building. The Government took the property 




;.n^* »-■ n*- 

A STATE SCHOOL CLA.SS-ROO.M. 



192 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

over and made the library free. The size of the building has since been doubled, and a 
separate lending branch has been opened in Macquarie Street, nearly opposite. Although 
the position is not central the library is well attended. In several of the suburban munici- 
palities there are free libraries, the law allowing a portion of the rates to be applied to this 
purpose. There is a large library of general literature attached to the Mechanics' School of 
Arts, access to which is attainable by a subscription of five shillings a quarter. There is 
also a Parliamentary Library, a scientific library attached to the Royal Society, a law library' 
at the Supreme Court, and another library at the University, which latter will be greatly 
enlarged as soon as the Fisher bequest for that purpose has been expended. 

The markets of a city are generally characteristic places, and in many respects 
typical of the habits and character of the population. Sydney has three agoras, but 
only the Fish Market at Woolloomooloo can claim any consideration on architectural 
grounds. One is situated in the old Haymarket — the hollow that lies between the 
Railway Station and Brickfield Hill. This locality, as its name implies, was in earlier 
days the place where the farmers who brought in their ha)- from the country drew up 
their waggons and waited for customers. But the character of this trade has now under- 
gone a change ; most of the hay comes to the city by train, and goes down to the 
goods-station at Darling Harbour. The George Street frontage of the Haymarket 




-'iliKil. CHILDREN TRAVELLING AT SI \ 



has been let on building lease by the Corporation, and a portion of the spare ground 
in the rear is a favourite place for travelling circus managers to pitch their tents. On 
part of the land the Belmore market-sheds have been erected — very plain, commonplace 
buildings, and only specially interesting on Saturday nights. The market-sheds are then 
all filled with farm and garden produce, meat, clothing and children's toys ; buying and 
selling going on vigorously. In the adjoining open ground merry-go-rounds are humming 
and roaring, jugglers are playing their tricks on temporary platforms, tragedies are 
enacted on a stage in front of a canvas theatre, pennyworths of electricity are sold to 
those who like the sensation of a shock, a panorama of the last great war is to be 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



»93 




THE INTERIOR OF THE CENTRAL MARKETS. 



W.'T'^M<:">-»cy 



THE CENTRAL MARKETS. 

seen in a showman's booth, and the 
sellers of boiled peas ply their trade 
with vigour ; for peas are so much a 
specialty in Sydney as chestnuts in Italy, 
roast potatoes in England, and pea-nuts 
in America. The Sydney larrikin may 
be studied here enjoying himself in his 
own peculiar way. .Some of them are 
shabby, though not from want of money ; 
but others, amid all their vulgarity, 
affect a certain degree of showiness in 

dress, accompanied with an evident self-consciousness of the elaborate style in which they 
are got up. The physique indicates a preponderance of the animal, and the conversa- 
tion is painfully overladen with profanity. They, with their female companions, take a 
pleasure in seeing and in being seen ; promenading towards the city at times to turn into 
one of those dancing saloons, or cheap music-halls, which of late years have greatly 
increased in the city — A consequence of the large amount of money which lads in 
.Sydney can easily earn, and which they like to spend in pleasure. 

Another metropolitan market is the older one in George Street on the northern side 
of the Town Hall, adjoining the land on which lately stood the old City Police Court, 
since condemned and pulled down. The market building is utterly unworthy of its posi- 
tion or of the city, and its removal is only a question of time. It is at present a 
disputed point whether the Markets ought to be reconstructed here. The site was con- 
venient enough in early days, when Sydney was small, but it is altogether inadequate at 
present. A position on the water's edge, or nearer to the Railway Station, would be 



194 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

more suitable. It has been proposed to clear the whole ground for a square, but the 
land is verj' valuable, and the Corporation naturally wants a revenue. At a very early 
hour in the morning on market days a large business is transacted here by the fruit-sellers, 
who dispose of their produce to the dealers, and during the day a considerable retail 
trade is done at the stalls, while the firms engaged in shipping fruit to the other 
colonies are actively, employed in making up their packages and dispatching them to the 
steamers. Sydney is supplied with fresh fruit of some kind all the year round, for not 
only has it its own double climate of the coast and the table-land to draw upon, but cool 
Tasmania to the south, tropical Queensland to the north, and I-"iji to the east, all send 
in their contributions. But the gala time for these markets is the Christmas week, 
when the dingy sheds are made glorious with flowers and fruit. 

Nothing strikes a visitor from the northern hemisphere so much as the altered 
character of Christmas wares in Australia. All his usual associations are upset — the 
temperature, the vegetation, the fruits and the [lowers seem out of season ; the year is 
turned ■ upside down. Let him go into the Sydney Markets in the Christmas week and 
he will see the people all dressed in light summer costume, and the stalls profusely 
heaped with summer produce. There are lilies, pelargoniums, fuchsias, hydrangeas, and 
rhododendrons yielding great clusters of bloom, with here and there some roses left from 
the wealth of spring. Close to them, stacked in profusion, are apples and pears, plums 
and nectarines, apricots and peaches, with other garden fruit. A few grapes have been 
already ripened on some sunny eastern slope, and gathered from a shady patch, where 
once the mosses grew by the water-side, strawberries ma)- )et remain. Side by side with 
baskets and boxes of cherries looking as fresh as the product of a Kentish June, 
melons, pomegranates and figs maintain the semi-tropical aspect of the show, which is 
further accentuated by huge bunches of bananas hanging aloft, close to bread-fruit and 
date-plums brought from the neighbouring islands. The vendors of animals seem, from 
the pains they take with their display, to calculate on a good trade at Christmas ; 
black-nosed pugs, hairy poodles, monkeys, cockatoos, paroquets, flying-foxes, and even kan- 
garoos and emus are on view for sale. 

Standing by the main entrance to the Markets, and looking down the avenue past 
the piled pomegranates and melons, the palms and the pampas-grass, the blaze of colour 
from the flowers, the pink-tipped green of the Christmas-bush, and the gay-coloured 
scarves and handkerchiefs of the fancy stalls to the live creatures mewed in cages at 
the farther end, the scene may seem to a visitor to resemble rather an Eastern bazaar 
than the market-place of a people of the English race. Yet it is unlike either — in fact, 
it is like nothing else in the world ; it is characteristic of Australian development ; it 
has come of a prosperous people slowly departing from their old-world, cold-clime notions 
under the influence of a semi-tropical sky. Even in dress, manners and appearance 
the people are various, and show in different degrees the influence of new conditions. 
Eronting the same stall two gentlemen may be seen, the one dark costumed, the other 
in cool and pleasant white ; one wearing a tall silk hat, the other a pith helmet ; one in 
polished boots, the other in canvas shoes. Say not that the one is comfortable and 
that the other suffers, for there is an appreciable satisfaction in clinging to old-world 
customs, and the gentleman in broadcloth looks complacent and dignified, though flushed. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



195 



More noticeable still, perhaps, are the contrasts among those who buy and sell and 
do the work of the Markets. The old porter sitting upon his hand-barrow wears his 
moleskins and checked cotton shirt as in the days of regulations. If Christmas now 
brings more grog and tobacco, Christmas is welcome to him; but he would not change 
the order of his attire for Christmas, or for any other f^c day ; and almost as stanch 
to old traditions is the 
portly and prosperous man 
who has kept a stall and 
sold garden - produce for 
forty years, has kept also 
his old cut of coat, his old 
watch-chain with seals, and 




•a- 



^*^^^*«:.^^, 



A PARRAMATTA ORANGE GROVE. 



his old contempt for things new-fangled or un-English. But the sons and grandsons of 
the earlier generation have taken other views and other forms ; the climate has had an 
effect on them in physiognomy, in physique and in tastes. The youth from the farms 
and market-gardens are mostly tall and slim, somewhat lank-limbed, sunburnt, often dark- 
haired and dark-eyed ; they contrast well with their oranges, their melons and their 
grapes ; their taste for rich colours comes naturally in a land where so much is richly- 
coloured. The silk veils on their soft felt hats are frequently bright blue or green ; they 
twist crimson sashes around their waists ; they are addicted to gorgeous cravats, and 
lounge about their stalls or carts as though the dolcc far niente were a familiar experience ; 



196 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

they are lazily self-possessed, independent in spirit, and careless of patronage — typical of 
a development in a new world and under progressive social conditions. 

Not more characteristic, but on a larger scale, is the Sydney crowd in George 
Street on an ordinary Saturday night. Anyone who wishes to study the physiognomy, 
the dress, the style and carriage of the people, may have his fill of opportunity here. 
From the Haymarket to King Street is one continuous crowded promenade. Why so 
many people turn out at this particular time to march in solemn procession it is hard 
to say ; but men are gregarious and the creatures of custom, and all the world goes 
where all the world goes. This is not the promenade for the wealthier classes : there 
is nothing in Sydney approaching to the character of a fashionable Parisian boulevard; 
George Street on a Saturday night gathers the metropolitan multitude. Of late )ears 
several arcades have been made, runnintj throu<>h from Georo;e Street to the streets 
behind. These covered-ways are brilliantly illuminated at night, and thickly set with shops 
on either side, but the main street is the chief promenade. A visitor coming in to the 
city from the Railway Station for the first time might wonder what the commotion was 
about; but this is the normal condition of the street every Saturday night. It is a 
stream of people a mile long, and very seldom indeed is it stirred boisterously or rude))- 
by any exhibition of passion or of blackguardism. 

Although the type is dominantly Australian, there is a visible mixture of various 
nationalities. This is due partly to the variety always to be found in a great sea-port, 
and partly to the attraction the colon)- has held out to immigrants from different 
countries. One may recognize the physiognomy of the industrious German settlers, 
French and Italian vignerons interested in the sale of their wines, and strangely-garbed 
Asiatics who have strolled up from the ships lying alongside the Quay at the end of the 
street. Tints of black and brown are seen together; dark Arab boys from Aden, ebon- 
hued as the coals they handle, without a trace of lustre on their cheeks, clad in dingy 
blue frocks,- red scarves and parti-coloured caps; shiny-brown fellows from Madras and 
Bombay, many of them as handsome as Greeks, and gaily dressed in crimson and blue 
and gold. They come to the street bazaar to do a stroke of trade, bringing bundles 
of carved and polished sticks, trays of silver and filigree work, curiousl\-cut ivory, and 
scarves and kerchiefs of the rich colours and intricate patterns peculiar to Eastern 
looms. Passing tliem may be seen the yellow, fiat-faced, slant-eyed Chinamen, who have 
come in from their vegetable gardens, or up from their gambling-saloons and furniture- 
shops, and who thread their way unobtrusively and submissively through the crowd ; 
while deepest in colour, and perhaps lowest in type of all, is the black boy from North 
Queensland, brought down by some squatter from an exploring or a droving trip, and sent 
down town with an injunction " not to get bushed." Touched with all these points of 
colour and darkness, ebbs and fiows the main Caucasian current, not without peculiarities 
and curiosities of its own, to some of which sad and strange histories are attached. 

The blind beggar stands with his medical certificate and scriptural text hanging on 
his breast, indifferent apparently as a statue, and only moved to display some symptom 
of life when a passer-by drops a penny in his box. The blind fiddler scra])es away at 
tunes that seem to have forgotten their music ; and the attendant old woman, whose 
shawl and bonnet look like relics of English work-house life, extends her saucer in which 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



197 




■A 
'A 



•J 
as 
O 
id 
•J 






the pennies rattle. By the steps of the Post Office— as at the gate of the temple called 
Beautiful — some cripple, hour after hour, makes his monotonous vendor's call : and the 
old newspaper seller, with his bundle of assorted wares on his knees, sits patiently, 
unstirred by the hurry of competition, and taught by long experience that out of all the 



198 . AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

tens of thousands who pass by enough will want something for Sunday reading to clear 
out his stock and send him home provided for. The representatives of the fever of 
competition are to be found in the newsboys, who, barefooted and often bare-headed, 
dart at every chance of a likely customer,, filling up the intervals of actual business with 
shrill cries and eager appeals, and disposing of thousands of copies of the latest issues 
of the evening press. 

And over all resound the city chimes. Eight o'clock, and the crowd is beginning 
to gather ; nine, and it is thickening fast ; ten, it is thinning ; eleven, it is hurrying 
homeward. At this hour the slow and aimless step gives place to haste, for the theatres 
are emptying, the hotel doors are closing by order of the law, the shop-windows are 
darkening, and the life and desire of the city is dying out. By midnight George Street 
is quiet. If the moon be clear the shadows of the great buildings lie across the silent 
roadways, the policeman's footfall echoes on the pavement, and the only noise comes 
from some midnight revellers, homeward-bound and trolling forth a chorused song. 
Later on the silence is hardly broken at all. The policeman is seen passing from door 
to door, trying if each is securely locked; the gas burns fainth' in some of the windows; 
while others are barred and brightly lighted. Down the cross streets that meet the 
water the wharf-lamps are reflected in the still depths, and the only sounds that disturb 
the quiet is from some inward-bound vessel working slowly up to her moorings. 

Parks and Pleasure Grounds. 

Sydney, with its suburbs, is gradually filling all the space between Port Jackson 
and liotany Bay, but more by accident than design, there is a belt of unalienated land 
— part of which is already devoted to pleasure grounds — running across in an almost 
continuous line between the southern shore of the former and the north shore of the 
latter, and this is mostly park ground. The beautiful Botanic Gardens touch the waters 
of Farm Cove. On their southern side they are divided only by the breadth of a street 
from Hyde Park, which stretches south as far as Liverpool Street. Here there is a 
break in the continuity of pleasant green reserve, for the suburb of Surry Hills is 
closely built, and unrelieved by any square — too compact a mass of brick, mortar and 
macadam for a city in this climate. But beyond this suburb begins the ample space of 
Moore Park, and that adjoins the Centennial Park and the upper part of the old City 
Water Reserve, and this, though partly private property, stretches down to the engine- 
pond, which is separated by only a dam from the waters of Botany Bay. The reser- 
vation of parks did not form a part of the plans of the early founders of the city. In 
their days acres were many and people were few, and the administrators had pressing 
troubles enough to exercise their minds without thinking of the wants of a densely- 
populated city of the future. Had It occurred to any surveyor to lay out the plan of 
a large city and intersperse the building areas with suitable reserves, the site would 
have lent itself admirably to a design that could hardly have been surpassed. But the 
city was left to grow without a plan, and the reserves as we now have them are happy 
accidents. As it is, the area reserved from building is large, but it might have been 
much better distributed, there being considerable blocks thickly built upon without any 
suitable open spaces to refresh the eye and sweeten the air. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



199 








By far the most 
beautiful and high- 
ly improved of all 
our public reserves 
is the Hotanic Gar- 
dens, which are 
devoted to the de- 
velopment of the 
floral beauties of 
the temperate and 
semi-tropical zones. 
It was chosen for 
cultivation pur- 
poses in the first 
instance as being 
the nearest suitable 
spot to the Go- 
vernor's canvas 
dwelling, but a bet- 



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3i 



ter site for permanent Botanic Gardens could hardly have been selected had the country 
been scoured for a dozen miles around. It has a frontage to the lovely Farm Cove, 



200 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

the curved line of which is a charm in itself. The ground lies open to the north, 
and slopes upwards to the other three points of the compass. The shelter is greatest 
on the western side where it is most wanted, for the wind from that quarter is at all 
times trying to delicate flowers, and it is also protected from the south and the east. 
Except in the hollow the soil was not naturally rich, and in some places is very 
shallow, the sandstone protruding here and there. But art has turned these jutting 
blocks of stone to the best account, and the soil has been artificially improved by 
constant and elaborate culture. Nature furnished a happy opportunity, and the gardener's 
skill has done the rest. It was first used as a farm — hence the name Farm Cove ; but 
in the year 1816 it was dedicated as a reserve, and its ornamentation as a public 
garden then began. The old stone wall — which still remains pierced with its pillared 
gate — over-grown with ivy and faced with magnificent clumps of azaleas, separates the 
upper from the lower garden, and was in the early days the boundary between the public 
grounds and some bush-land that lay between them and the ba)'. When the lower garden 
was added to the upper, the road-way between the two was made a broad promenade. 

A further annexation from the Government House Domain took place after the 
close of the International Exhibition in 1879. '" '^^e Governor's paddock was built 
the Garden Palace, and after its destruction by fire the ground on which it stood was 
added to the area of the public gardens. The Norfolk Island pines, which at once 
arrest the attention of the visitor as he enters by the original gate-way in the valley 
of the Domain, are among the oldest specimens of arboriculture in the colony, and in 
their present condition are said to be finer than any that can be found in Norfolk 
Island itself. The two trees that face the visitor as he enters were first planted at 
the entrance to the old Government House in Bridge Street, but in the year 181 7, 
when twelve-feet saplings, they were transplanted to their present position. These trees 
are not only attractive by their symmetry and abundant shade, but they have also an 
historic interest. They are of equal date Vv'ith the surveying of the Domain Road by 
Mrs. Macquarie, and indeed that energetic lady may have watched their transplanting, 
even if she did not order it. Many capable men had the Gardens in charge in early 
years, amongst whom were Allan Cunningham, the King's Botanist ; Messrs. Eraser, 
Anderson, and others; and for forty years Mr. Charles Moore, the present Director, has 
made it a labour of love to improve and l^eautify them. The broad grassed fiat near 
the water was at one time a sandy beach. The tide rose to the point where Allan 
Cunningham's monument now stands, and the walk round to the Governor's bathing-house 
was a bit of rough rocky fore-shore, thick with sea-weed. All the present frontage for 
some distance back from the sea-wall has been reclaimed. 

The best entrance to the Gardens is now from Macquarie .Street, opposite the 
Public Library, and in front of the fine bronze statue of Sir Richard liourke. Hanked 
by cannon trophies captured in the Crimean war and presented to the colon)-. The 
gates open on broad lawns tastefully decorated with carpet-bedding. This high ground 
was the site of the Garden Palace, and at the foot of a flight of steps the cemented 
basement of the foundations of the central dome is still to be seen, the only remaining 
relic of that palace of delight. Dome, courts and galleries were all reduced to ashes 
in the fire, but where the ruins lay are now well-ordered terraces and lawns, which 







PLEASURE GROUNDS, SYDNhV. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



20I 



extend from the Domain boundary on the one side to Government House on the other. 
The open spaces— chiefly of soft and shining green, here and there a clump of 
blossoming shrubs, or brilliant-tinted flowers and leaves— give colour and variety to the 
landscape, while below, the dense foliage of the lower garden rises in beautiful contrast. 
Bordering the path leading down are some pieces of statuary— copies of celebrated 
works, C a n o V a ' s 
" Boxers " and the 
" Apollo Belvidere " 
being conspicuous 
amongst them ; while 
farther on a " Venus 
di Medici " gleams 
snow)'-white amid the 
glossy foliage. Below 
the terraces, and 
w i t h i n the ample 
shade which covers 
all the walks of the 
western slope of this 
old garden, are the 
larger beauties of the 
lordlier zones ; palms 
rise in clumps, small- 
fruiting cocoa-nuts 
and sago-trees from 
Brazil lift their 
feathery plumes high 
towards the sky, and 
giants of the yjicca 
tribe put out their 
flower-spikes. In the 
thickets close by are 
rare plants from New 
Zealand, and richly- 
foliaged shrubs culled 
from the gullies and 

ravines of our eastern shores. By the side of the creek a great variety of Australian 
ferns have been planted ; they grow to perfection in the rich soil, and beneath the 
undisturbed shade of the higher trees. In little groves wild duck and teal sport 
in happy security ; and just beyond the rustic bridge that spans the creek is the 
giant pine, which from this point is seen to great advantage. Indeed, as the tree 
of a foreign forest, towering over all those of native growth, it stands symbolical 
of the established supremacy of immigrants of foreign sap over the old native race. 
Since it was planted many men of colonial fame have sat and moralized beneath 




rut; LILY I'U.NU, 13UTAMC GARDENS. 



202 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



its cool shade, looking up through its latticed roof to the distant glimpses of the soft 
blue sky. Surrounding this celebrated pine are many gorgeous trees — hibiscus with 
crimson trumpet-shaped blooms, flame-trees with flowers as scarlet as feathers from a 
flamingo's breast, tulip-trees and magnolias from China and Japan, lovely jacarandas from 
South America ; and by the side of these droop graceful English willows, the whole 
group giving a perpetually varying contrast of colour and form of foliage. Nearer to 
the Harbour waters are shaded knolls commanding lovely views of the Cove, its waters 
flecked on summer holidays with countless white sails ; in the near distance Government 
House rises behind its well-grown and tastefully-grouped trees like a baronial castle set 
in some English park. Close to the sea-wall, which sweeps in a bold curve from 
" Mrs. Macquarie's Chair " to the man-o'-war steps at Fort Macquarie, is a continuous 
soft carpet of buffalo grass — a great promenade of green, which, despite the tread of 
innumerable feet, maintains its freshness and elasticity. 

To the botanist the great range of vegetation represented in these Gardens is 
exceedingly interesting. The coffee-plant is seen growing side by side with the mango, 
the elm and the lime-tree, and our own kurrajoiigs by the palms of the Islands. 

Danwiaras and araucarias 
are as luxuriant and grand 
as in their native homes. 
The great majority of 
English flowers come to 
perfection, though some that 
love the damp thickets and 
six months' winters of the 
old world cannot withstand 
the too-abundant sunshine. 
Rhododendrons manage to 
flower, but azaleas seem to 
revel in the richness of their 
ofenial surroundinp's. Of 
English trees, poplars and 
elms thrive well, the horse- 
chestnut and hornbeam but 
poorly, and the beech and 
ash barely exist. The oaks 
annually throw out good 
foliaee, but do not seem 
likely to produce anything 
worthy the name of timber. 
The hearts of oak so famed in song and story will never be truly Australian on the 
low land, for the trunks tend to become pipy in twenty years. The trees indi- 
genous to high altitudes and excessively moist localities fail to display the vigour 
and beauty natural to their proper habitats. Some trees native to Australia also object 
to the cool sea-breezes and the rajs of a semi-tropical sun ; sassafras struggles, as do 




A WALK IN THE BOTANIC GARDENS. 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY, 



203 




THE SEA-SIDE WALK, OUTER DOMAIN. 



also most of the sun and drought proof 
scrubs of the western plains, with the 
exception of salt-ljush, the great fodder- 
plant of the interior, which, with the 
fragrant myall and the vast tribe of aca- 
cias, thrives well. Lime-trees resist the 
humid heat, and coffee plants from Ceylon 
and palms from Brazil withstand the cold 
of the Sydney winter. Scientific botany 
has not been neglected in the Gardens. 
There is a small museum containing a 
good and well-arranged collection, while 
for the benefit of students plants and 
trees are described by their botanic titles, 
as well as, wherever practicable, by their 
common and familiar names. 

South and east of the Gardens lies 
the general public Domain. A pleasant carriage-drive leads round by " Mrs. Macquarie's 
Chair" — a favourite rendezvous on holidays, as it is a commanding position from which to 
view the Harbour. On regatta days, or when a man-o'-war is leaving, this is practically 
a grand-stand. From the "Chair" the drive returns past the Public Baths to the Director's 

residence, from which point there are three exits — one into 
the valley of Woolloomooloo, another past the Art Gallery' to 
St. Mary's Cathedral, and a third into Macquarie Street, the 
road which connects the two latter passing at the rear of the 
Houses of Parliament and the Infirmary. The entire drive, 

which is naturally 
much appreciated, is 
beautiful throughout, 
and in some parts 
strikingly picturesque. 
Hyde Park is 
practically a continua- 
tion of the Outer 
Domain, being cut ofT 
from it by only an 
intervening road. At 
the northern entrance 
of the broad prome- 
nade which runs down 
its centre stands a 
fine bronze statue of the late Prince Consort. Facing it in Chancery Square, within 
a railed space fronting St. James's Church, is also a bronze statue of the Queen, on a 
granite pedestal. Hyde Park was reserved in the first instance as a race-course for the 






iS^\ 







MRS. MACQUARIE S CHAIR. 



204 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



amusement of the citizens of the early days. It was dedicated by Governor Macquarie, 
and cleared as a course by the ofiFicers of the regiment then on service in the colony, but 
when the noble sport moved further afield the ground was retained as a pleasure-reserve. 
It is now vested in the hands of trustees, who have done much by judicious planting 
and careful gardening to make it a very delightful resort. Hyde Park is the finest 
boulevard and promenade that the city possesses. At the intersection of Park Street, and 
facing the corner of College Street, is the magnificent bronze statue of Captain Cook, 
the work of Woolner, the sculptor. At the opposite corner is a rotunda where on certain 
afternoons and evenings a military or naval band performs. Throughout its area the 




'.V,. 



ST. MARY S CATE, OUTER DOMAIN. 



Park is ornamented with fountains and parterres of flowers, and its splendid broad boule- 
vards are planted with heavilj-foliaged Moreton Bay fig-trees, which make on fervent 
summer days a cool and umbrageous retreat. 

The citizens of Sydney owe Moore Park to the action of a few of their predeces- 
sors, who in the early days secured from the Government a grant of the land. But 
it was not for themselves, or for their children, or for their children's children, that 
they asked for this area ; it was for their cows. There was no commonage attached to 
the young settlement ; the petitioners asked for one, and so the Governor apportioned 
off a large space of what was then a waste of wind-driven sand-hills. It is fortunate 
that the land was poor, or some influential person would have got it as a grant ; but 
because it was poor it was little used, and the citizens themselves in time forgot all 
about it. The officials in the Lands Office had no better memory, and in spite of the 
dedication it was treated as Crown land. The new Barracks were built upon it, and bit 
by bit the land was sold. But in a happy moment some one rummaging among old 
papers discovered the forgotten grant. The Corporation immediately laid claim to the 
land ; the Government, having poached on the domain, was at first inclined to treat the 
grant as having lapsed, but at last conceded the title so far as the unsold portion was 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



205 



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2o6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

concerned. The city was put in possession ; an Act was passed enabling the Corporation 
to sell a portion of the estate, and to borrow money for the improvement of the rest. 
Since then the appearance of the property has undergone a great change. The road to 
Randwick runs through it ; the western side has been levelled and grassed, and is largely 
used for foot-ball and cricket practice. A portion, once a swampy piece of ground, is 
devoted to the purpose of a Zoological Garden ; the pit of the old morass is now a little 
lake with an island in its centre, on which palms, willows and ferns display their graceful 
foliage. Animals from various climes are suitably housed and provided for. Young broods 
of lions and tigers are here ; elephants, with their liowdalis frequently packed with many 
children ; and, in addition to camels, bears, leopards, and the other ordinary occupants of 
a menagerie, there is a fine collection of the birds and beasts of Australasia — marsupials 
of every kind, from the six-feet " old-man " to the tiny and dainty rock-wallaby, wombats, 
dingoes, Tasmanian devils, opossums, tiger-cats, and all the denizens of the forests and the 
plains. A good idea of the varied form and plumage of the different Australian birds 
may be obtained by a visit to these Gardens ; for nearly all are to be found here, 
from the emu and cassowary to the little silver-eye and the blue robin ; from the native 
companion to the diminutive teal and water-hen. 

On the eastern side of the Randwick Road the reclaimed portion of the Park is 
devoted to different purposes. A long strip lying at the back of the Barracks forms 
the rifle-range, the targets being backed by a high natural wall of rock. It was first 
turned to its present purpose by the English soldiers who were quartered in the 
Barracks ; so, too, they were the first to level and lay out the present cricket-ground. 
This is now vested in trustees and managed by the Cricket Association. Twelve acres 
are enclosed, the playing-ground measuring one hundred and seventy-six by one hundred 
and sixty-four yards. Two thousand people can be seated in the grand-stand and a 
thousand in the pavilion. Uncovered seats round the oval will accommodate two thousand, 
and on the sloping banks behind them is standing-room for fully twenty thousand people ; 
on the occasion of great matches every inch of standing-room is occupied. Bicycle con- 
tests and athletic sports of all kinds also come off here, and tennis-courts, both grass 
and asphalt, are in the enclosure. Beyond the cricket-ground is the space granted to the 
Agricultural Society. Here, in addition to stalls for the display of every description of 
stock, is a good circular track for trotting matches, and a large central enclosure round 
which the horses and cattle are paraded to be judged. The Randwick Race-course lies 
south of Moore Park, and is well enclosed and planted ; there is a splendid grand-stand, 
and all the appliances suited to a first-class race-course. The tram-wa)' from Sydney 
lands visitors at the gates of the Cricket Ground, the Agricultural Show Ground and 
the Race-course. 

The Centennial Park, a magnificent reserve of about a thousand acres, to which 
reference has already been made, lies east of Moore Park. It is laid out in carriage- 
drives and ornamented with lagoons, the intention being to recoup the initial expense by 
selling a ring of residential sites within the Park. To the east of Randwick, and on the 
shore, is Coogee Bay. The whole beach, from point to point, is reserved for the public, 
and on both rocky headlands there are liberal spaces in frequent use as picnic-grounds. 
The beach is a popular promenade and a favourite bathing-place, the tram-way running down 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



207 



to its edge bringing on holidays multitudes of the city folk to enjoy the freshness of the 
pure salt water and the Pacific breezes. To the northward of Coogee is another reserved 
beach, furnished with a bathing-place, an aquarium and a skating-rink. It skirts Bond! Bay, 
the tram-road reaching within half a mile of the water. To the southward lie other inlets. 
especially Maroubra Bay and Long Bay, but these have not yet been made accessible by 
the tram, or even by good roads; but they are both available for future marine esplanades. 




^ 



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x.^. 





IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 






At the north headland of Botany there is also a large public reserve. The Customs 
House has a small station here ; and here, too, starts the telegraph-cable to New 
Zealand ; and a swing-bridge leads to the fortifications of Bare Island. The northern 
beach of Botany Bay, which is mostly reserved, is cut off from the western beach by 
the mouth of Cook's River, which debouches through a winding outlet between muddy 
banks into the north-west corner of the Bay. The whole of the western beach, from 
the mouth of Cook's River to the mouth of George's River, has been reserved for the 
public for a hundred feet above high-water mark, and is vested in trustees ; a public 
bathing-reserve is projected at Doll's Point. The whole line of the beach is admirably 
adapted for bathing purposes, as the sandy floor shelves gradually down, and only very 
seldom do the heavy easterly gales make any rough water on the shore. The Govern- 
ment has done but little as yet to improve this reserve, but private enterprise has 
already made a beginning in the work of turning to account its bathing facilities. The 
Illawarra Railway, after crossing Cook's River, runs within a mile of the shore, and 
from the Rockdale Station a private tram-line has been made to the water, where about 
an acre has been enclosed with piles to make the bathing-ground secure against sharks. 
This locality is so admirably fitted to be the bathing-ground for Sydney that the 
accommodation for it is sure to grow. 

Parallel to the beach, and a few hundred yards from it, but connected with it by 
a boulevard three chains wide, is Scarborough Park, another recent dedication. It was 
originally a swamp, receiving the drainage of the land to the west, and described in old 
Government maps as of no value. But as the beach was opened up to occupation, and 



208 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



its future importance became recognized by a few far-seeing men, it occurred to them 
that the swamp might be utihzed and turned into ponds, islands and rich grassy Ijanks. 
Application was therefore made to the Minister for Lands to have the whole area set 
apart for public use, and some adjoining private land was added. When the projected 
improvements are completed, this long narrow park, connected as it is by a broad 
botilevard with a nine-mile beach, will became one of the most beautiful and popular 
recreation-grounds in the southern suburbs. 

The other reserves within and close to the city are not very extensive. They might 
with advantage have been both bigger and better situated. Belmore Park, though inter- 
sected by the tram-way, and lying close to the Haymarket hollow, preserves ten acres, 




KANGAROOS. 



which are enclosed but not much improved ; the site is a favourite one for circus 
managers. Prince Alfred Park, adjoining the Railway Station, and therefore on the 
borders of Redfern and Surry Hills, contains eighteen acres. It is a part of the 
Cleveland Paddocks, the domain attached to the old Cleveland House — which still stands 
as a relic of past architecture, amid the busy streets and closely-built terraces covering 
all the surrounding space. A portion of the old Paddocks was appropriated to the Railway 
Station, and the present Park is simph- a remnant. In one corner stands the Ex- 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



209 




Tin: CAS.SOWARV, KMf AM) -NATUi; CUM 1' ANION. 



hibition Building, originally built by the Corporation for the Agricultural Society, but now 
devoted to a variety of uses ; concerts, public meetings, poultry and dog shows, bazaars, 
athletic contests, balls, minor exhibitions ; for all of which it is found convenient, while in the 
wool-season it is sometimes used as a store. 
Just outside the southern boundary of 
the city is a fortunate reservation — Grose 
Farm, a hundred and seventy-five acres of 
land originally devoted to one of the early 
agricultural experiments of the Government. 
The farming may not have been a particu- 
lar success, but we owe to it the happy 
result that the land was not granted awa)'. 
It is now subdivided, but onl)- detached pub- 
lic buildings stand on it. The University, 
with the Medical School, occupies a com- 
manding position on the highest ground. 
The three affiliated colleges have each a 
good slice of land, and the Prince Alfred 
Hospital stands between two of them. 
Another portion, of twenty-four acres, has 
been put in trust as the Victoria Park. The 

University cricket-oval lies in the valley to the west. None of the ground is at present 
as . highly improved as it should be, but every year something is done to ornament this 
valuable lung of the city and to make it as beautiful as it is useful. 

About a mile to the north of the 
University Reserve is Wentworth Park, 
originally a sea-swamp over which the high- 
tide sluggishly Mowed ; it had become 
greatly befouled by the drainage from the 
early Abattoirs, from the sugar-refinery on 
the Blackfriars' Estate, and from the 
houses on the slopes of the surrounding 
hills. It was reclaimed by a deposit of 
silt raised by the Harbour dredges, and this 
silt was covered with good soil. Instead of 
a nuisance it is now a fine Park of about 
twenty acres, lying between the suburbs of 
Pyrmont and the Glebe ; ornamental ponds 
have been made ; young trees are growing 
luxuriantly ; a cricket-oval has been formed 
in the centre, and a local bowling club has 
made an excellent ground in one corner. 
Another instance of the reclamation of a spoilt fore-shore is to be found on the 
east side of Sydney at Rushcutters' Bay. As its name implies, it was originally a 




••.jj^- 



THE DINGO OK NAT I VI-; DOG. 



2IO AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

swampy area in which grew long coarse grass — very serviceable in making some of 
those early huts, which, if they did not adorn the streets of Sydney, at least accommo- 
dated the inhabitants. Being easily procured, the reeds formed a cheap material, and reed- 
huts answered well enough till slab or weather-board houses were available. As the 
high ground surrounding the flat became occupied, the house drainage poured down into 
the valley and made an otTensive accumulation, while the silt from the streets filled up 
the head of the Bay. The portion to the north of the road has been reclaimed and 
walled in, and now forms a park in a rudimentary stage. The area on the other side 
of the road is private property, and remains in a neglected condition. 

The reclamation of the heads of the numerous bays in Port Jackson is still a work 
to be accomplished, but now that public attention has been strongly turned in that 
direction there is every probability that the water-side parks of Sydney will be multiplied. 
Down the Harbour there is a grand opportunity at Rose Bay, where the level ground 
reaches back to the sand-hills on Bondi Beach. Westward of the city the head of 
Johnstone's Bay, of White Bay, Hen and Chickens Bay and the swampy flats of the 
Parramatta River all invite attention. It is only a question of money ; tide-covered mud 
can be transformed into lovely gardens. 

Although the metropolis itself has by good luck a fair provision of park-land the 
suburbs are not so fortunate. The land outside Sydney was mostly granted or sold ; 
each proprietor subdivided in his own interest, and very few cared to adorn their plans 
with squares or crescents. As the population has thickened in these suburbs the 
people have felt the need of open spaces, and from them the movement originated for 
the purchase, while there was still time, of land not yet built upon. The Government 
has responded to this demand, and for each of the past four years a grant has been 
made for this purpose. As much as two hundred and seventy thousand pounds have 
already been spent in buying back parks for the people. A tenth part of this sum would 
have been sufificient twenty years ago ; in public matters there is always a penalty to be paid 
for delay. What the people now feel is that it is better late than never, and in laying 
out new townships it has become a part of our public policy to make ample reservations. 

At the South Head is a reserved area for defence works and light-houses, and the 
greater part of the North Head is retained for quarantine purposes. Manly has its long 
ocean-beach, with an esplanade overlooking it, and its Harbour-beach backed by another 
esplanade and its park ; there is also a reserve of a hundred feet in breadth round the 
adjoining headland which will some day be made into a beautiful water-side drive. On 
the peninsula between Middle Harbour and Port Jackson proper are the defence reserves 
of Middle Head, George's Head and Bradley's Head, and there are some, though not 
sufficient, reservations up Middle Harbour, the best known and most used being a public 
park at Balmoral, with a long strip of beautiful frontage of sandy beach. At St. Leonards, 
on the heights of North Shore, there is a reserved area of forty-five acres — already well 
planted with trees of foreign and native growth, enclosing well-kept cricket and foot-ball 
grounds and broad well-shaded walks. The cable-tram runs to its gate, making it acces- 
sible to the population living on the lower ground. 

Farther to the west on the north side of the Parramatta, and stretching back from the 
western shore of Lane Cove, was a large reserve of over six thousand acres known as 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



211 



the " Field of Mars." It received its title because it was the commonage attached to the 
free grants given in early days to the soldiers, who were planted in the district of Ryde 
in the hope that tlicy would become industrious freeholders. The hope was not very 
largely realized, and the farms quickly changed hands, but the common remained. The 
inhabitants of the district, cut off from Sydney by the Parramatta River, thought, how- 
ever, that a good road would be more valuable to them than a common, most of which 
was poor soil and thickly covered with inferior timber ; so they bargained with the 




Cl)(JGEE BAY. 



Government that it should take over the common, and give them in return a direct 
road to town, with two bridges, one over the Parramatta and one over Iron Cove. 
The bridges have been built, the road has been opened and has proved a great con- 
venience. The railway to Newcastle skirts the western edge of the " Field of Mars," 
and makes it accessible in that direction. The land is being subdivided and sold, but 
some portions are reserved. The old "Field of Mars" will be in a few years a populous 
suburb. Farther to the west lies the beautiful reserve of Parramatta Park, -the preser- 
vation of which for public enjoyment we owe to the fact that it was the domain 
attached to the old Government House, which still e.xists. Governors knew how to 
reserve land for themselves, if they were not always forethoughtful for the people, who, 
however, inherit what was once vice-regal luxury. The old Government House is not 
worth much, but the reserve, which was meant as a run for the Governor's horses and 
cows, is worth a great deal. It is now a fine Park, with beautiful drives around and 



212 



A USTR ALAS/A ILL USTRA TED. 



through it. Near the principal entrance still stands the tree against which Governor 
Fitzroy's carriage was dashed when Lady Fitzroy was killed. 

But the largest of all the metropolitan pleasure grounds is the great National Park 
lying to the south of Port Hacking — reserved by the Government of which Sir John 
Robertson was Premier. The railway to Illawarra skirts it on the west, and makes it 
accessible at that edge ; but the estate itself occupies nearly the whole area lying 
between the railway and the sea-coast, its northern boundary being the estuary of Port 
Hacking, and its southern a line drawn from Wattamola boat-liarbour on the coast to 
the head of the Hacking River. Within these lines an area of about thirty-six thousand 
three hundred acres is enclosed — a territory of infinitely varied beauty, giving on its 
heights broad plateaux suitable for military camps and manoeuvres ; on its beaches, in 
numerous little gullies and on open grassy plots, abundance of those situations 
experienced picnickers seek out ; while on and about the upper reaches of the river are 
some of the most glorious examples of forest-growth and semi-tropical luxuriance the 
colony affords. By the expenditure of a little money and some engineering skill, the 
waters of the upper river have been dammed back at a point eight miles from the 
cataract head of navigation ; the tides no longer rise, the floods coming down havfe 
washed out the salt, and a long fresh-water reach has been constructed, which, sheltered 
by the high hills and forests on either hand, is charmingly tranquil. A good carriage- 







A GLIMPSE I\ PARRAMATTA PARK. 



drive has been formed along the southern bank, following which the ferns, cabbage-tree 
palms, cedars and great Australian lilies, which form the most characteristic and beautiful 
features in Australian semi-tropical vegetation, are passed in abundance ; vines and 
parasitic creepers make also a grand display, climbing a hundred feet aloft to the top- 
most boughs of the tallest gums, and dropping thence gigantic tassels. Various other 
roads have also been made through the Park — one strikino- across from the head-waters 
of the River to the ocean-beach, bringing the charming little boat-harbour of Wattamola 
within reach of those who object to the ocean trip. Hitherto, however, there have not 



THE CITY OF SYDNEY. 



213 




uii: .\.wiu.\al takk, i'.'i.r hacking. 



214 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



been any large efforts made to impart an aspect of civilization to this Park. Its manage- 
ment is in the hands of trustees, who get a grant of three thousand pounds a year to 
spend on its preservation and improvement, and with that they can do little more than 
open up roadways. The natural ruggedness and freedom have been largely and wisely 
preserved ; it is a bit of original Australia kept to recall to us what the coast country 
was like in the earliest days ; it is a bit of wild nature within easy reach of the civili- 
zation of a great metropolis ; it is an uncultivated botanic garden in which survive the 
native floral beauties of the land ; it is a wilderness for those who like the change from 
hot and dusty streets ; it is, and will probably long continue, a place where the labours 
and worries of town may be temporarily forgotten, and where on all holidays the multi- 
tude may get out and find scope for the free enjoyment of all innocent natural propen- 
sities. It is the great Park of the future, and though it may remain a wild preserve, 
the railway will soon bring the long line of southern suburbs close up to its edge. 

S 





X 



^-'' ^^(.. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 

THE HUNTER RIVER DISTRICT. 

A BOUT seventy-five miles north of Fort Jackson the Hunter River finds its outlet 

to the sea. Ninety-three years ago Lieutenant Shortland, when hunting for some 

runaway convicts, saw the inlet north of Nobby's, and very cautiously entered. He found 

no convicts, but he found coal, which was far more important. He called the stream 

Coal River, and Coal River it remained for some time, though before the close of the 




I 



NEWCASTLE IN 1 829. 

PAO-SIMILE OF A SKETCH BY SIR THOMAS MITCHELL. 

eighteenth centur)- the settlement had been formally christened Newcastle, while the main 
river had received the name of the Hunter, after the Governor. The only regular 
communication at that time was by the little schooners Cumberland and Integrity, of 
twenty-six and fifty-nine tons respectively, which plied for a year or two between the 
settlement and the Port. In those days there were no companies and no grants. In 
1801 Governor King declared all coal and timber discovered at the Hunter River to be 
the exclusive property of the Crown, and no ship was allowed to trade without recog- 
nizances of fifty pounds, and two sureties of twenty pounds each. The license to dig 
cost five shillings, and there was also a duty of two shillings and sixpence per ton to 
be paid on all coal shipped, and that this might be satisfactorily collected it was advised 
that onl)- one kind of basket should be used, " weighing one hundred-weight, to measure 
the coal in and out of the vessel." 

Such was the beginning of the town which now ranks first among the coal-ports of 
the Southern Hemisphere, and which in its appliances for safe and rapid shipment is 
fully abreast of the needs of the trade. The resources of the Port and district are so 
large and varied that there could be no doubt about their ultimate growth when once 
enterprise had taken root, though the stringent regulations of the early days made 
progress slow and not always proportionately sure. Prior to 1804 there had been many 
accidents owing to " mines having been dug by individuals in the most shameful manner, 
without having props." For this, sailors were responsible ; ships used to put in, and the 
crews would both cut and ship coal, burrow into the hill-side as far as seemed safe, and 
leave unprotected the excavations they had made. To prevent a recurrence of these 
accidents an order was made that in future no sailors should work in the mines, but 



2i6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

only Government men under the direction of professional miners. These latter were paid 
at the rate of three shillings and sixpence per day, and the coal was sold in Sydney at 
a cost of ten shillings per ton, or more accurately a ton of coal was bartered for ten 
shillings-worth of wheat, corn, mutton or pork. In 1821, the last year of the Adminis- 
tration of Governor Macquarie, the district was thrown open for settlement, and at that 
date its history proper begins. We cannot here trace all the steps of its progress ; we shall 
at once pass from the puny efforts of sixty years ago to the marvellous results of to-da\'. 

The passage from Sydney is effected at present by steamer — two good lines 
ministering to the wants of Newcastle in this particular — though the North-Eastern Line of 
Railway from Strathfield to Waratah, recently completed, has largely superseded ocean transit. 
The harbour is protected by a breakwater, connecting on one side of the entrance the 
main-land with the rocky hummock known as Nobby's Head and stretching beyond it 
into the open sea, and by a second dyke of great stones on the other side reaching 
towards Nobby's from the oyster-bank — narrowing the entrance and increasing the scour. 
Even on a comparatively quiet day a silver line marks the course of this weather-wall, 
and when the wind blows roughly from the south or east huge white-crested billows may 
break over it, momentarily disturbing the calm of the Port. On a very boisterous da)- 
it is interesting to note, from the the hill-top of the peninsula-head, the difference between 
the rough sea breaking on the coast — causing the big steamer weathering the farthest 
point to heave and pitch — and the smoothness of the protected haven. 

Upon the arrival of the steamer at her moorings, and • on an ordinary working day, 
the traveller will view a scene .of animated labour. On the main wharf there are the 
steam-cranes lifting the coal and depositing it in the hold x)f some dingy collier or ocean 
mail-boat. Past the steam-cranes, and continuing the sweep of the wharf, are staiths for 
loading the smaller kinds of vessels, and beyond these again are the staiths of the Austra- 
lian Agricultural Company. The accommodation for ships coaling here was found to be 
altogether insufficient, and so Bullock Island, lying directly opposite the cvihoucluirc of the 
River and close to the shore, was connected with the main-land by a railroad ; eight large 
cranes were erected upon the fore-shore, and these are worked b)' a powerful hydraulic 
apparatus located in a neat stone building about a hundred yards to the rear. Along- 
side the wharves gather all the Melbourne regular liners, Sydney traders, ships and 
steamers by the dozen, taking coal to the other colonies, the Islands, California and 
India. The connection between the Government line and the collieries is maintained by 
various private lines. 

A good comprehensive view of the shipping of Newcastle is to be obtained from 
a point on the wharf a hundred yards to the eastward of the Customs House, though 
if a i^erfect panorama be desired it is better to climb Nobby's Head, or up to the 
summit of Monument Hill. From the latter point a good view oi the town also is to 
be had. It is set in a rather cramped nook, its development resembling that of a 
fig-tree which has chanced to take root in a little earth-patch, with rock all below and 
beyond. It has grown in whatever direction it could find space ; straggled along the 
harbour front ; climbed boldly up the escarpment of the shore. It lies on the seaward 
face of Monument Hill, with its one important street curving round the hill-foot 
roughly parallel to the wharves, and the other streets coming straight down the steep 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



217 



slope in a sheer descent, joining this main city-artery at right angles. The banks, the 
hotels and the newspaper offices are in this busy traffic-way. named Hunter Street, and 
above them nestle dwelling houses, looking out across the Hill— the site of the public park 




NOBBY S HEAD, NEWCASTLE. 



-Wr 



and recreation-ground — down on the bold coast-line, and away to the ocean beyond. In 
Newcastle, as in Launceston, the hill-face is terraced with roofs, and one's garden-gate 
may swing level with the chimney-pots of the adjoining houses. 

The town is famed rather for its commercial importance than for its beauty. Utility 
is the foremost consideration, and the whole city is eloquent of its staple product. 
There are no public buildings in Newcastle worthy of the importance of the town, or 
commensurate with its prosperit)-. The Customs Office is commodious and neat, and the 
Asylum for Imbeciles finely situated on the Hill. The banks are rather substantial than 



2l8 



A US TEA L ASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



ornate in their design, and the churches have evidently been built to meet the wants 
of a practical people, and not out of munificent endowments. The School of Arts is a 
convenient and modern building, while the theatre is suggestive of early days. The 
Post Office and the Court House — with an imposing portico supported by four Doric 
columns — are at the southern end of Hunter Street, and here also are the more 
important hotels. At the northern end of the Street is a scene of busy life ; omnibuses 
ply all day to the various outlying villages, and the foot-paths are bustling with shippers 
and sea-faring men. On Saturday night the one business artery of the city is thickh- 
thronged with crowds of men and women, and youth of both sexes, gaily tricked out in 
holiday attire. The visitor listening will catch words and phrases with the west of 
England accent, and may well imagine himself in a Cornish mining town, although the 
surroundings are rather suggestive of the north of England. 

The population of Newcastle and the surrounding colliery district is not less than 
twenty thousand, but it covers a wide area. There are no suburbs proper to the great 
northern coaling city, but each colliery has its separate town. Hamilton, Lambton, 
Waratah, Plattsburg, Wallsend, Stockton, Wickham, Charlestown, Anvil Creek, Greta and 




HUNTER STREET, NEWCASTLE. 



Minmi are important mining centres — the homes of miners who toil upon the spot. 
Each colliery is connected with Newcastle by rail, and around its mouth spread acres 
of huts, which are deserted every Saturday night when the tired toilers take their 
weekly holiday in their dusky city. Interspersed among the homes of each colliery are 



r 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



219 







SHIPPING COAL AT BULLOCK ISLAND. 

the shops of general dealers, and 
the churches, schools and other in- 
stitutions provided by the State or 
raised by local effort. From the 
summit of Monument Hill the largest 
of these may be seen set in clusters along the 
seaward slopes of the low, bare or sparsely- 
timbered hills, the houses straggling out towards 
them across dreary flats. As Newcastle progresses 
the town will embrace all these outlying posts ; the shallow reaches and bays between 
Bullock Island and the swampy land about the mouth of the Hunter River will be 



220 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

dredged, and where necessary excavated ; docks will be made, and wharves for the extended 
commerce will fill all the available areas in the Port and continue far up the River; the 
metals of the North will be brought down to the pit-mouths for smelting ; manufac- 
tories growing and commerce increasing, so that the coal-city will divide with Sydney 
the commerce of New South Wales. This is not an extravagant forecast, as the 
Port and district have extraordinary resources, which the new line of railway from 
Strathfield to Waratah will greatly develope. The cpiantity of coal raised for one year was 
over two million tons, and Newcastle is besides increasingly becoming a ddpot-^oxX. 
for wool, the shipment of which for the l.ondon market during the wool-season of 
1889 numbering nearly forty-eight thousand bales. 

Stockton, a busy mining and ship-building suburb of Newcastle, is situated on the 
northern side of the harbour. Amongst the various industries that support it lime- 
burning and steam-saw-milling take an important place. In connection with the ship- 
building yards is a patent slip constructed with a view of repairing ships of the largest 
tonnage, while the work-shops are fully abreast of the latest improvements of the trade. 
The shears here have been erected to lift a weight of thirty tons. The principal coal- 
seam of the district has been proved to underlie this suburb, and shafts have been sunk 
to work it. At Stockton begins the northern breakwater, several hundred feet in length, 
but it is at present incomplete. When finished it will, in conjunction with the southern 
dyke, keep the c/Souc/mrc of the Hunter River within a comparatively narrow channel, 
and thus increase the scour of the harbour. The population of .Stockton is about eight 
hundred, and communication with Newcastle is kept up by means of half-hourly steamers. 

An important suburb of Newcastle, and one which includes the villages of Tighe's 
Hill, Port Waratah, Islington and Linwood, is the colliery municipality of Wickham, 
distant from the city about one mile. It has a population of over two thousand, and 
ratable property valued at nearly three hundred thousand sterling annually. At 
Wickham one of the principal industries is the Hunter River Copper Works, with 
twenty-two furnaces manipulated by a large number of hands. Messrs. Hudson Brothers 
have here large engineering works ; and here, too, are located the Sydney Soap Company's 
manufactory, cordial factories, saw-mills, and various wool-washing and fell-mongering 
establishments. Wickham includes the P^erndale and the Maryville collieries. 

Hamilton, a colliery suburb of Newcastle, is the site of the Australian Agricultural 
Company's mining operations. The great shaft was sunk many years ago through a 
troublesome quick.sand, but the seam is of first-class quality, its cleanness causing it to be 
much appreciated for generating gas, as well as for household use. Several bores have 
been put. down at different points of the Company's large estate with a view of attacking 
the seam at other places. The town has a population of about two thousand inhabi- 
tants, the great majority of whom find employment for their labour in coal-mining. The 
Castlemaine Brewery has a branch here, and here also is the patent fuel factory, which 
takes the small coal from the different pits and fashions it into oval blocks, turning out 
about sixty tons of fuel a day. The ratable annual value of the property in this 
district is estimated at over three hundred thousand sterling. 

Waratah is not now so important as a coal-mining centre as it was some years ago, 
the seam on the original estate having been worked out. The Waratah Coal Company 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



22! 



has transferred the principal portion of its plant to South Waratah, or Raspberry Gully, 
adjoining the village of Charlestown, where a new mine has been opened out. But 
Waratah is not dependent on its coal alone. The clay has been found suitable for 




pottery, ant! cop- 
per and tin smelt- 
i n g works are 
successfully con- 
ducted, while in 
the vicinit)- of the 
town large quan- 
tities of oranges, 
grapes, bananas 
and other varie- 
ties of fruit are 
raised. The 
population of the 
district of which 

Waratah is the centre is close upon 
three thousand. Charlestown proper 
is but a small village of about five 
hundred inhabitants, but with every 
prospect of future growth and pros- 
perity. It is situated on the road to 
Belmont, a little marine village pic- 
turesquely planted on the shores of 

Lake Macquarie, and a prospective watering-place for the Newcastle and Hunter River District. 

Lambton, an important suburb of the northern coal-city, is distant five miles from 

Newcastle. The colliery here belongs to the Scottish Australian Mining Company, which 

has been working on this site for the past thirteen years ; it employs the larger 



THE LUCEK.NE HARVEST I.V THE 
MAITLAND DISTRICT. 



222 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



number of the inhabitants. The pit is connected with the Great Northern Railway by a 
private line. Oranges and vines are cultivated in the vicinity of the town, and stone- 
quarrying and steam-saw-milling are thriving industries. One mile distant is the estate of 
Messrs. Brown and Dibbs, on which is situated the colliery village of New Lambton, 
the seam here being the same as that worked in the adjoining parent township. In the 
vicinity are the New Lambton Smelting Works, and but a short distance away are the 
stone-quarries and steam-saw-mill of Jesmond or Dark Creek. 

Of the colliery townships around Newcastle undoubtedly the most important is 
Wallsend, the scene of the operations of one of the w-ealthiest coal-mining corporations 
in Australia — the Newcastle and Wallsend Company, whose colliery employs nearly seven 
hundred men and boys, and whose output is frequently over three thousand tons of coal 
a day. The seam dips from the outcrop to a depth of about three hundred feet. There 
are three pits on the estate, but the greater part of the coal is drawn from a tunnel 
put in at the outcrop. In respect to population Wallsend ranks as more than a mere 
suburb, three thousand being the estimated number of its inhabitants. It possesses a 
school of arts and various churches, and property to the ratable value of nearly three 
hundred thousand pounds per anniun. Its importance as a mining-centre may be gauged 
from the fact that it is ranked in the same class as the largest collieries in England. 




HIGH .STREET, WEST MAITLAND. 



Adjoining the important coal-mining town of Wallsend is another colliery, Plattsburg, 
the head-quarters of the Co-operative Colliery, employing nearly five hundred hands This 
town is also renowned for coke-producing, having a large number of ovens erected for 
the purpose. The State school here is capable of accommodating eight hundred children, 
and is considered one of the finest institutions of the kind in the district. Plattsburg 




< 

X 



n 
O 
z 

s 
o 

as 
m 

w 
< 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



223 



I 



possesses also a fine building in its School of Arts. The seam of coal worked by the 
Co-operative Colliery is the same as that worked by the VVallsend Company, 

The population of Minmi is about two thousand, the greater number being employed 
in the local collieries, the property of Messrs. J. and A. Brown. Minmi is about six 
miles from the railway station of Hexham, which again is distant from Newcastle four- 
teen miles. A private line, how- 
ever, connects Minmi with the Great 
Northern route and tlie shipping- 
shoots at Hexham. At one pit over 
six hundred hands are employed, 
and they raise above a thousand 
tons of coal a day. In the vicinity 
of the town oranges are cultivated 
with considerable success. 

Anvil Creek and Greta are 
adjoining collieries, which, although 
lying beyond the town of Mait- 
land, are properly adjuncts of the 
Newcastle coal-trade. The seam 
at the Anvil Creek colliery, known 
as "Farthings," is over fourteen feet 
in thickness, while that of the Greta 
Coal and Shale Company is nearly 
as thick. The latter mine has two 
shafts, one of which is over two 
hundred feet in depth. Its average 
output is considerably over fifteen 
hundred tons, raised by nearly three 
hundred hands. The population of 
the district is about two thousand. 

Up the Hunter River or by the Great Northern Railway is the approach to the 
larger areas whose commerce focalizes naturally in the coal-port. A somewhat uninteresting 
river about its ocean estuary is the Hunter; flat as the fen-country of Lincolnshire, 
but with manirro\es meetinjj the low and luxuriant scrub-gfrowths of the fresh-water 
country about innumerable reaches and lagoons ; and yet it is a countrj' that in places 
lacks not sentiment or beauty "of a peculiar kind. Exquisite pictures may indeed be 
seen from the railway line, where some mile-broad swamp is set in low, wooded knolls, 
the feathery oaks rising dark alcove the lower foliage ; light grass of a delicate green 
rustling over the surface, and the water shining beneath. Long-legged cranes may be 
seen flapping lazy wings, or a little herd of cattle wading knee-deep, giving life and 
warmth to a picture that might otherwise be monotonous. But the ground rises ^lowly, 
and hardens with every mile. The salt swamp-foliage is left behind. The black soil 
sweetens and takes on a rich coat of lucerne, or a luxurious garment of sorghum, 
maize, or oats. The broad flats consist of alluvial drift many feet deep, and the lucerne- 




ST. .MAKV S CHURCH, WliST MAITLAM). 



224 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



roots, striking down to the water-level, get nourishment from the under-soil without the 
need of any deep ploughing. Five or six crops are obtained in the year, and year after 
year, without any fresh tillage. The husbandman's labour is that of perpetual harvest. 

At the head of navigation is the town of Morpeth — once the great shipping-port, but 
whose trade has been largely diverted by the railway. It is, however, one of the 
prettiest towns on the Hunter River, and is reputed to be one of the healthiest. A 
branch line of railway connects it with the town of East Maitland, and it has daily 
steamers to and from Sydney. Near it are some coal-pits, but the business of the town 
rests mainly on the fertility of the flats that fringe the river. Morpeth is well laid out, 
and contains several fine buildings, the Anglican church being one of the most picturesque 
structures of the kind in the colony. Along the river-banks are the wharves of two 
steam-ship companies which connect with the railway, the Hunter being navigable as far 
as Morpeth to vessels of eight hundred tons burthen. The Government has here a 
coal-staith to accommodate one of the main industries of the district. . The population 
is nearly fifteen hundred, and the ratable property of the municipality close upon one 
hundred and twelve thousand pounds a year. 

But the town for this district, or rather the double town, is Maitland, divided by 
the water of Wallis's Creek. East Maitland, laid out on hitrh and dr\- crround, is the 
Government town ; but West Maitland, laid out on the alluvial flat by the river-side as 
a private town, took the public fancy more; and, though occasionally liable to floods, 
has become the principal business place. Expensive works, however, have been undertaken 
to prevent the Creek from encroaching on the main street, which runs along the rich 





THE TOWN OK EAST MAITLAND. 



alluvijil flat, and which has on cither side many interesting relics of tlie old order, and 
some good specimens of the new. Patriarchal verandahed hotels look out from their 
small-paned windows, burdened with many memories, and fine new four-storeyed buildings 
of stone, brick and cement have arisen which would not discredit Sydney. Yet there is 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



225 



\ 




r. 

-a 






S 



Hi.. :: -rMiUM' i 



an indolent air about ever^'thing and everybody — an air of contentment and confidence. 
The richness of the soil seems to impart an infection of trustful laziness. Everything 
grows with a minhnuni of toil ; a neglected b^ck-yard becomes a lii.xuriant pasturage, 



226 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



and a moss that is green as grass puts a beautiful if not a healthful coat over many 
old shingle roofs. The new, however, is fast out-growing the okl. The banks have 
shown their appreciation of the importance of the place by the superior style of their 
premises. The Maitland Mercury, the oldest paper in the northern district, has expressed 
its belief in the future by building substantial offices, and the churches make display 
of faith by solid and beautiful works. The Hospital is a large building, on a good 
site, and the schools, both State and private, are large and handsome, well-finished and 
well-furnished. Several factories have taken root, and some hundreds of the inhabitants 
find regular employment in tanning leather, making boots and shoes, building carriages, 
sawing timber, manufacturing tobacco, brewing beer and making brooms. Hut the farmers 
are the main-stay and support of the place, for the land about Maitland is so rich and so 
easily worked that the freehold of a hundred acres is a fair fortune. Some blocks used 
solely for lucerne-growing have been sold at upwards of one hundred pounds an acre. 
The farmers of the district have also developed an aptitude for skilfully and economically 
managing their own business. They were, for a long time taxed by the commissions of 
middle-men ; but in a happy moment they adopted the idea of a " Farmer's Union," 
every member of which should bind himself to sell his produce at auction. The market 
or fair was inaugurated. It needed no elaborate building, a space of open ground near 

the railway station, with a few 
„,4«, sheds for perishable articles, 

being sufficient. 

To this market-place on 
Wednesda)' in each week come 
the farmers and the townsfolk, 
and many dealers from the Port 
and the metropolis. The gather- 
ing is large and unique of its 
kind. Nowhere in Australia, 
perhaps, could you find a more 
thoroughly representative as- 
semblage of Australian-bred men 
and women. The settlement 
is very old, and many of the 
farming- people are natives of 
the second and third generation. 
There are clear indications of 
the distinctive Australian type, 
the sallow on men's faces blot- 
ting out the russet which their 
grandfathers brought from England. There is very little superfluous flesh amongst either 
the men or the women. But if the people are beginning to vary a little from the 
English type, the produce they bring to market varies still more. 

Certainly the pigs of all sizes, with the dressed sheep of an abnormal fatness, 
would be familiar enough in England, as would also the crates of poultry of all 




THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, I'ATERSON. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



227 



varieties; but somewhat un-Entrllsh would appear the piled drays' of farmers' produce — 
great green melons and bulky pumpkins stacked in mounds to be sold by the ton ; 
grapes, rich, luscious, heavy as the clusters of Eschol ; oranges in their golden glory ; 
tomatoes in boxes; chillies and pomegranates; bundles of green sorghum and maize and 
great bales of fragrant lucerne hay. It is such produce as the peasants on the Arno, 
or even farther south on the warm and fertile slopes of Etna, would bring down to the 
Italian cities for sale. All is bought and sold there with abundance of good-humoured 
Australian banter, and when all is over the 
farmers mount their drajs or carts, -waggons 
or buL^L^ies, and io<r alonu; homeward with 
man)' a gossiping pause. It is their life 
from week to week, from )-ear to year — a 
fairly useful and satisfactor\' life, with which 
in all our rich coastal districts we ought to 
be far more familiar, for we have other 
breadths of naturally fertile country, though 
few, perhaps, so rich as Maitland in pros- 
perous agricultural development, and certainly 
very few that would lend themselves so fairly 
and kindly to artistic treatment. 

The rich soil and humid climate 
afford not only luxurious vegetation and 
beautiful foliage, but an atmosphere which 





CHURCH-GOING AT PATERSOX TOWNSHIP. 



>28 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



permits warm lights in the foreground, with soft and mellow distances (even before the 
eye is brought to rest on the spurs of the Liverpool Range), and a sky of all manner 
of cloud-shapes, from the faintest, fairest forms of cirrus to the dense strata through 
which the setting sun scarce breaks, and the rolling masses of ciminli with their lustres 
and lights of silver and gold. 

At Maitland are the water-works for the district. The water is pumped from the 
Creek, filtered in large beds and delivered by gravitation. One feature of the scheme is 
a great artificial lake to be filled whenever the Creek is clear, so that in flood or fresh 
the supply may be had from this reserve store, instead of from the turbid stream. 

From Maitland it is but an easy two hours' journey to the Paterson River and 
the pretty village of Paterson, passing on the way the healthy little settlement of Hinton, 
lying on the south bank of the Hunter, opposite the junction with the Paterson. In 
very early days settlers took up the land on the river-banks, and within a few )'ears 
must have set the willow twigs which show such luxurious beauty of form, and yield in 
summer time such delightful shade. The fruit-trees and English oaks on the clearings 
of the upland have an equal date with the willows, and many an old resident can 
remember the time when Sydney seemed a month's journey away, and to travel to 
Newcastle was to incur unknown risks. P'olk live long about the Paterson — perhaps because 
they live well. Everything favours them ; the climate is genial, the soil is rich, Nature as 
beautiful as she is bountiful, and there are no signs of hurr\- or bustle anywhere. Sunday 
is a busy day in the little town, for the Paterson people are fond of their church, or it 
may be of the pleasant church-going, which to the country settlers is not a dreary pilgrim- 
age along an uncomfortable road, or a walk stiff-starched through citj-streets, but a drive 
or a gallop of an hour along the bush-roads or the river-banks, bordered with the 
fragrant wattles or the shadowy willows. Bright girls and stalwart lads, from the orangeries, 
the vineyards and the farms, may be seen on Sunday afternoon cantering down the 
village street, tying their horses up to the fence, and, with all the reverence that can 

be associated with 
riding-habits and 
spurs, entering the 
little church. 

Northward from 
Maitland the rail- 
way proceeds along 
the narrowing val- 
ley of the Hunter 
R i \- e r , through 
country well fitted 
to the vine— the vineyards at Lochinvar and Branxton being especially celebrated. Just 
before the first great bridge of the line is reached stands Singleton, fifty miles from the 
coast as the rail runs. Singleton dates as a settlement from 1825, and the town has much 
of the substantial if not the venerable aspect of age. The rich alluvial flats known as 
Patrick's Plains will grow maize, tobacco and grapes as long as people are found to till 
them, and the coal industry established at Rix's Creek, three miles away, shows signs of a 




THE SINGLETON AGRICULTURAL SHOW-GROUND. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



229 



large development. Singleton is a prosperous and contented colonial town, putting on the 

airs and aspect of importance only when the annual agricultural display is made in the 

really fine pavilion of the local show-ground, at which time excellent stock is to be seen in* 

the adjoining stalls and yards. The next town is Muswellbrook, remarkable for its beautiful 




V"' f' 



church, built by a 
wealthy local family at 
a cost of eleven thou- 
sand pounds, from the 
designs of Sir Gilbert 
Scott. Muswellbrook 
is the centre of an agricultural and pastoral district, but the character of the country 
is principally fitted for tillage. Though situated in the valley of the Hunter, it is fairly 
elevated, being nearly five hundred feet above the sea-level. The population of the 
town is somewhat over a thousand, and that of the entire district nearly four thousand ; 
the chief local industries are the growing of wheat, maize and tobacco, and the cultivation 
of the vine. Of its public buildings, besides its fine church, the Hospital and the 
School of Arts are the most noteworthy. 

From this point branches off the road to the north-west, through an important 
district, and one which was early settled in consequence . of its convenient access to the 
sea. The road lies through the towns of Denman, Wybong, Merriwa, C'assilis, Denison 
Town and Cobborah, and there is no other route from the coast by which the main 
range is so easily crossed. Denman is situated on the Hunter River, three miles from 
its junction with the Goulburn. It lies in an agricultural and pastoral district ; the flood- 
deposits of rich soil being bounded by ranges of sandstone hills. Standing on the main 
road to Sydney, it forms a watering-station for travelling stock. Wybong, the next town 
in order, is a little to the north-west of Denman, and is really but a small and unim- 
portant village. More to the northward is the agricultural centre of Kayuga, while to 



230 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

the south-west lies Gungal. Of these north-western towns, however, Merriwa undoubtedly 
occupies the first place. It is situated on the ' Merriwa River and on the main north- 
western route to Bourke, and is in a very thriving condition. At Worontli Hill, in its 
vicinity, gold has been found, and at Portmantle coal and kerosene-shale. Throughout 
the district iron-bark, box, pine, gum, cedar and stringy-bark flourish, and the soil is well 
suited to the cultivation of wheat, maize, potatoes and the vine. But the country about 
Merriwa is neither entirely mineral nor agricultural, pastoral pursuits claiming a fair share 
of the attention of the settlers. The scenery near the town is exceedingly fine ; moun- 
tains surround it, and their stern grandeur is softened by the numerous streams that 
have their rise in the Liverpool Range. A feature of the place is the fine bridge which 
spans the River near the recreation-ground. Merriwa is famous for its merino sheep, 
and the names of Brindley Park and Collaroy are well known to Australian breeders 
and wool-brokers. Cassilis, on the Munmurra Creek, to the west of Merriwa, is the chief 
town of a large pastoral district. The soil is very rich, being composed of basaltic 
detritus. Beyond Cassilis is Denison Town, and still farther west Cobborah, which 
belongs properly to the Dubbo District, being reached by coach from the Western 
Railway. Cobborah is the last town of this north-western route, which stretches through 
a broad expanse of highly fertile pastoral and agricultural country. 

North of Muswellbrook lies Aberdeen, situated on the Hunter River, and touched 
by the main road stretching between Muswellbrook and Scone. Aberdeen is over six 
hundred feet above sea-level. The country around it is both farming and wool-growing, 
though the latter predominates. This town is also a railway station on the Great 
Northern Line. Eight miles farther on the railway passes through the old settlement of 
Scone. Although the elevation is seven hundred feet above the level of the sea, the 
climate is genial in winter and warm in summer. The country in the neighbourhood 
consists of well-wooded plains and gently undulating ground, for the most part occupied 
as pasture - land ; but on the Kingdon Ponds, a tributary of the Hunter, wheat is 
cultivated with success. The ugly cactus bush, known as the prickly-pear, has unfortunately 
been allowed to overrun many fields, and completely beats the farmer, the cost of 
clearing being more than the land is worth. I-'rom Scone the spurs of the Liverpool 
Range may be seen in the distance, and about ten miles in a northerly direction is the 
one burning mountain of the Continent — Wingen. Closer to the town is a highly 
romantic and wildly picturesque bit of scenery known as Flat Rock, a never-failing 
attraction to northern tourists. Scone has the character of a sanatorium, and its climate 
is as healthful as the scenery of its mountains is grand. (lold is found near the town, 
though not in large quantities, the district being more a farming than a mining one. 
Pastoral and agricultural pursuits are successfully conducted, the main products of tillage 
being wheat, maize and tobacco. Wingen, the next important station on the railway line, 
is situated on the Kingdon Ponds Creek, at an altitude of a thousand feet above sea- 
level. Kerosene-shale and coal of good quality are found in the neighbouring hills, but 
the village is very small, and is chiefly known from the proximity of the burning hill 
of the same name, some three miles distant. After leaving Wingen the railway traveller 
passes some miles of plain-country, till the train plunges once more into a mountainous 
region, and passing through the mineral village of Blandford, rich in silver, copper and 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



231 



lead, it emercjes into the valley of the Page River, at the head of which stands 
Murrurundi, so called by the abori^nnes, the term signifying "a great camping-ground." 
The Ri\er, flowing through the town, divides it into two parts. Murrurundi, at the foot 
of the hills, is over fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is the last town 
on the Great Northern Railway before the line crosses the Liverpool Range — the 
boundary of the Northern District proper. A fine wooden bridge afifords communication 
with the important village of Haydonton. 



T H K No R r H K K N D I ST K ICT. 

At this point begins the great railway-work of surmounting the bold front of the 
Liverpool Range. Beyond Murrurundi the line, sweeping with a rising gradient round 
the face of the enclosing hills, pierces the mountain with a tunnel over five hundred 
yards in length. On emerging a new kind of country is disclosed — a great squatting 

area, a vast tract with marvellous resources 
as yet undeveloped. Its virgin harvest, and 
little more, has thus far been reaped. It 
is the country of the Liverpool Plains, the 
" Cobbon Comleroy " of the natives, ten 
million acres of rich 
volcanic soil sloping 
away from the coastal 
range towards the 
Darling River. 

The first station 
of any importance after 
entering this Northern 
District is O u i r i n d i , 
situated on the Qui- 
rindi Creek, a little 
village of some three 
hundred inhabitants. 
Hut though itself in- 
significant, it is sur- 
rounded by a splen- 
d i d 1 y fertile country 
capable of producing 
in a propitious year a 
hundred thousand 
bushels of various kinds of grain ; this area supports also numerous flocks of sheep and 
herds of cattle. To the east, in an almost direct line, are Nundle, Hanging Rock and 
Dungowan ; to the west, a line of villages ending with Warkton and Coonabarabran. 

A few miles beyond Ouirindi is the station of Werris's Creek, from which branches 
off in a north-westerly direction a line through rich level country. The greater part of 
the journey is along the edge of a treeless plain, twenty-four miles in breadth. Here 




THii ri-;i:i. uivkk at 

TAMWOKTll. 



232 



A US TRA LA SI A ILL US TRA TED. 



the mirage is a common phenomenon, and north of Maitland there is hardly a more 
beautiful vision than this vast expanse, a sea of green in spring, of yellow in autumn, 
the boundaries of which are woods so distant that they appear in a purple haze below 
the line of the dark blue mountains against the pale blue sky. The railway passes 

through the little vil- 
lages of Gap, Breeza 
and Curlewis, but the 
first considerable stop- 
ping-place is Gunnedah 
— a town of about a 
thousand inhabitants, 
situated at the junc- 
tion of the Mooki 
Creek with the River 
Namoi — which, being 
the centre of a district 
already prosperous, and 
destined soon to sup- 
port a larger popula- 
tion, promises to be an 
important market town. 
The surrounding coun- 
try grows large quanti- 
ties of excellent wheat, 
over five thousand 
acres being under til- 
lage. Far westward is the little village of Baradine, the terminus of a coach-service 
from Gunnedah. Farther on along the line is the small settlement of Boggabri, sur- 
rounded by rich alluvial plains well fitted for the production of various kinds of grain. 
Passing through Baan Baa and Turrawan the line terminates at present at Narrabri, 
though it is intended to continue it to some point on the Darling. 

Narrabri, the second town of importance on the North-Western Railway Line, is 
situated on a creek of the same name, and contains nearly nine hundrctl inhabitants. 
The soil is very fertile, but is occasionally submerged by the floods that rush down from 
the ranges. There are, however, vast tracts of rich land on the hill-slopes that are 
altogether out of danger of inundation, and these are being rapidly settled by pioneer 
farmers, whom the opening up of the district by railway extension has induced to 
migrate from the country traversed by the longer established routes. Due north from 
Narrabri is the little pastoral village of Millie, and farther north again the slightly more 
important one of Moree, from which latter, travelling in a westerly direction, the border 
town of Mungindi is reached. It stands on the New South Wales side of the River 
Barwon, and is a most important frontier settlement and river-crossing for travelling 
stock. The main roads from Sydney and Maitland pass through it, and a great quantity 
of South Queensland wool crosses the River at this point on its way to Sydney. Mogil 




PEEL STREET, TAMWORTH. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



233 



M o g i 1 , Wee Waa 
and Pilliga are out- 
post villages to the 
west ami north-west, 
connected with Nar- 
r a b r i by various 
postal and stock- 
travelling routes. 

This is the bor- 
der-land between 
grazi 

tural occupations, 
and only the uncer- 
tainty of the rain-fa 
and the limited 
market prevent the 
latter from winning 
the victory. A few 
years ago the district 
was all pastoral, and 
nothing more than a 
little cultivation for 
station supplies was 
thought of. The 
m a p b e }' o n d was 




then -'all white," but 
now every inch of 
available country to 
the west has been 
taken up, and natu- 
rally looks for its 
supplies of produce 
to the agricultural 
district which is near 
it. In good .seasons 
the frontier farmers 
have the advantage 
of supplying the 
back settlers, but 
when thro u g h 
drought their har- 
vest has failed, 
wheat, hay, bran and 
potatoes have to be 
brought up by rail 
from the cou n try 
lower down, or even 
from Newcastle. 
The squatter can 

.stand dry weather better than the farmer, but even the squatter has often been 
sorely punished. Notwithstanding the richness of the .soil, therefore, and the facilities 
offered by the railway, the dr)ness of successive seasons has kept agriculture back. But 
the farmers have got a footing, and will keep it ; though as yet they have not changed 



234 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



the dominant pastoral occupation of the country ; indeed, the Liverpool Plains still 
constitute one of the finest squatting districts of the colony. On this volcanic soil the 
grass is always sweet, and after the most devastating drought the face of the countr) 
is changed in a week by a good fall of rain. The rapidity of the transformation is 
almost magical. Over an immense area, looking just before as bare as a road, there is 
green grass, and in a few weeks it will be waving like a field of young wheat. In 
many places it will shoot up as the cane-growth of a tropic swamp ; a horseman may 
take some of the longest seed-stems and knot them above his head. Cattle are hidden 
in it, and sheep have to be taken back to higher and poorer feeding-ground. A stranger 
looking at this riiagnificent growth of grass could hardly believe that a few months or 
weeks previously animals were dying for want of food. It is one of the troubles of the 
Australian squatter that he is treated alternately to a feast or to a famine. Nature is 
profuse at intervals, but she has also her seasons of niggardliness. What man has to 
do in these climates is to learn the art of storing the surplus of good years, and making 
it provide for the wants of scanty years. Nature here teaches the lesson of forecast and 
prudence, and it is because this lesson has been so insufficiently learned that there have 
been so many reverses of fortune — that Australia has been alternately praised as a land 
of plenty and denounced as a land of barrenness. Enough has already been done b)' 
irrigation in some districts to show that by a moderate outlay in preserving water, and 
pumping from the rivers, sufficient hay could be grown at a reasonable price to save 
from destruction the choicest portions of the flocks. In a climate where the rain-fall is 

so uncertain, permanent 
and productive settle- 
ment can only be se- 
cured by the storage of 
water and the storage 
of food, and this is the 
double problem that lies 
before the settlers of 
the future. 

Tamworth or Armi- 
dale ? Which is to be 
the greater of these 
northern towns ? The 
question is one of local 
interest, and provokes 
some rivalry not alto- 
gether unwholesome. 
Both show a closer re- 
semblance to English county- towns than do most of the inland cities of Australia. 
Both enjoy a fine and invigorating climate, both have about them fertile areas ample 
for the support of large populations. Tamworth was the first settled, and in respect 
to population still retains the lead. Like Maitland, it is a divided town — Tamworth 
East and Tamworth West. The western side is the first touched by the railway, 




THE ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL AT ARMIUALE. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



235 



and in the course of nature should have been the larger of the two. l)ut the Peel 
River Company, an offshoot of the Australian Agricultural Company, possessed and 
used for pastoral purposes all the magnificent land to the south and west, and freehold 
farmers could get no footing there. "No farmers, no town," is a law in these districts. 




ARMIDALE. 

Great squattagcs are not so favourable to the growth of inland towns as small farms 
are, because their business lies more with the commercial towns on the coast. Absentee 
landed proprietors, especially when they take the form of dividend-seeking companies, 
have no close sympathy with local movements ; for while they favour some forms of 
enterprise, and often display a spirited application of capital in the way of improvements, 
they frequently block the natural course of settlement. Tamworth, cramped on the 
western side, spread to the east across the Peel River. Farmers searched out and took 
up tracts of country fitted to grow wheat, thus finding ample means of subsistence, and 
a sure source of permanent prosperity. 

Minerals were found in many localities — gold at Nundle and Barraba, diamonds at 
Bingera, and copper at Dungowan. Flour-mills were erected to grind the wheat, and 
stores multiplied to supply the wants of the increasing population. The Roman Catholics 
have done most for ecclesiastical architecture in Tamworth, and indeed their church is 
superior to all the other buildings in the tow^n ; they have also a fine, well-built convent 
to which is attached a good school. The corporation has had the good .sense to plant 
trees along most of the streets, and to found an excellent public library. Amongst the 
business enteqjrises of the place are flour and saw mills, coach factories, breweries and 
a manufactory of galvanized iron. 

Northward from Tamworth the railway route follows the general line of the old 
road along the backbone of the colony, which here spreads out into a great table-land. 
Over the Moonbi Ranges— a terrible trial to teamsters in the old days— the line passes 



236 



A US TRA LA SI A ILL CIS TRA TED. 



Bendemeer and Salisbury Plains, runs a few miles west of Walcha and throuo^h Uralla. 
For a space of about ten miles across the Moonbi a vast breadth of some of the 
grandest and most characteristic of Australian scenery is seen from the railway : great 
round hills, forest-clothed to their summit ; crag-fronted mountains with deep-ploughed 
ravines in their sides ; giant tree-ferns, seen palm-like in the water-fed nooks below ; 
and the lords of the forest, the great blue-gums of the mountains, towering (like the 
serried lances of the Miltonic host) above the bright blossomed odorous scrub-growth. 
Occasionally the glint of a brook or the Hash of a waterfall is seen, the black cockatoo 
shrieks as he flies disturbed from his lofty eyrie, and the eagle floats along the sky, 
apparently regarding even this most stupendous innovation of the human race with 
supreme contempt. 

Uralla is situated on the Rockv River, and (rood ^oXA has been found in the 
beds of ancient streams covered in many places by eruptive volcanic matter or the 
detritus of ages, so that the town has been largely supported by miners. Fifteen miles 
beyond is the city of Armidale, at an elevation of over three thousand three hundred 
feet. This is the cathedral town of the Anglican bishop of the North, and sometimes 
his residence. The cathedral church of St. Peter's is one of the finest brick structures 
in the place. The city, also the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, is the centre of 
a district of large and varied resources. The open downs invite the plough, and miners 
have found profitable scope for their labour within an easy distance. The soil and 
climate are especially adapted for orchards, the European fruit produced here being of 
first-class quality. Antimony exists in considerable quantities, and the ore is rich. 
Churches, schools, official and commercial buildings give indications of a rich, prosperous 

city. The Post Office is a large 
and handsome structure, while the 
banks are built in a style showing 
unmistakably faith in permanent 
and profitable business. Armidale 
is also the centre of a district rich 
in natural beauty. A few miles 
from the town the mountain chain 
rises — wild and picturesque, with 
precipitous heights and deep 
gorges, down whicli after summer 
storms and winter rains great 
bodies of water rush, producing 
the Uangar, Wallamumbi and 
many other lesser and unnamed 
cataracts. The Wallamumbi Falls 
are of peculiar beauty, especially 
at that hour when the slanting 
sun-rays, playing on the water-mist, spans the twin torrents with a bow of prism tints. 
In ordinary seasons, however, water is scarce here, and only rivulets trickle through 
the ferns and fall in spray-showers over the bare faces of the rocks. 




THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL AT ARMIDALE. 






THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



m 



The mineral enterprise of the New England District finds its larger development 
more to the north in the neighbourhood of Glen Innes, Tenterfield and Inverell. the 
two former towns being along the route of the railway to the Queensland border. 
Inverell lies to the 
west of Glen Innes, 
and is to be con- 
nected with the main 
line by a branch rail- 
way. Many settlers 
from the Scottish 
Highlands were at- 
tracted to this district 
by the congenial 
climate, and li a v e 
fastened on the coun- 
try some old familiar 
names — Ben Lomond, 
Oban, Glencoe. Ben 
Lomond is the sum- 
mit of the range, the 
railway track reaching 
at this point an eleva- 
tion of four thousand 
five hundred feet ; 
after passing the sum- 
mit the line runs down 
to Glen Innes, a pros- 
perous town of two 
thousand people, in a 
fine invitroratinof 
climate. Tin - mining 
has added greatly to 
the prosperity of the 
place, the metal hav- 
ing been discovered 

in large quantities at Vegetable Creek, twenty-eight miles in a northerly direction. Many of 
the deposits were profitably washed out by the primitive appliances of the first discoverers, 
but "claims" more difficult to deal with have since been successfully worked by elaborate 
machinery. Inverell is also the centre of a tin-producing district, and the country lying 
between it and the town of Glen Innes contains a large breadth of agricultural land. The 
vine flourishes here, and is extensively grown. Where the soil invites to farming and the 
climate is favourable, mining often leads to permanent settlement. The mineral is the 
magnet that draws the people ; who, searching for subterranean treasure, are struck by 
the richness of the easily-worked soil, and many adventurers throw aside pick, shovel 




THE WALLAMUMBI FALLS. 



238 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

and sluicing-gear for ploughshare and reaping-hojok. The miners furnish an immediate 
market for the local produce, and even if the mining industry should fall off, the 
farmers stick to their land and look for customers farther afield. This has been the 
histor)' of many a settlement in Australia which began with one industry and finally 
gravitated to another. 

Tenterfield, the border town, is also to some extent agricultural, though the country 
is granitic and the soil shallow. Minerals of several sorts have been traced about the 
mountain spurs and the river-beds that lie to the east and north. Gold, silver and tin 
have all been discovered in payable quantities. Some of the richest ores, however, are 
rather untractable, and those which could be most easily worked are in somewhat 
inaccessible positions. The thorough development of the wealth of this district awaits 
the right combination of skill and capital. The next township to the north, Stanthorpe, 
the centre of the Maryland tin-fields, is within the Queensland territory. On the border- 
line is the junction of the railway systems, a break of gauge necessitating a stoppage 
and a transfer. 

This high table-land, along which the Northern Railwa)- runs, will always be the 
home of a robust population. To the west the ground slopes away, and as the rain-fall 
becomes smaller and smaller, agriculture gradually ceases, till pastoral occupation holds 
almost undisputed sway. And this is mainl)- the character of the large triangular tract 
of countrv Ivine to the west of the Great Northern Line ; of which Tenterfield and 
Mungindi may be regarded as the extreme points of the base and Tamworth the apex, 
•while the two railway routes bound it on either side. Within these lines cluster a 
number of villages more or less important. The principal are Yetman, Warialda, Emma- 
ville, Stannifer, Tingha, Bundarra, Bingera and Barraba. None of all this number has, 
however, arrived to the rank of a town ; they are merely mineral or pastoral villages, 
whose growth and whose future hang upon the caprices of climate and the success 
which may attend the enterprise of mining speculators. 

The high table-land, on which Glen Innes and Tenterfield stand, lies between the 
great pastoral slope towards the west and the rich agricultural province on the east. 
The elevation of the table-land makes the descent to the coast necessarily steep, and 
for this reason the connection between the two is difficult and expensive. In early days 
a bullock-track was cleared up the ridges from Grafton to the high land ; later a coach- 
road was made, and the streams were crossed by substantial bridges. But even this 
road is a severe one for traffic, and the inhabitants both of the highlands and the 
lowlands have been pressing for a railway. Such a line, it is said, would not only g.fve 
to the table-lands the quickest access to the sea, but it would also facilitate an inter- 
change of the semi-tropical coast produce with the wheat of the colder climate »f the 
plateau. Two different routes have been surveyed ; one goes from Grafton to Glon 
Innes, the other starting from the same point passes through the Richmond Rivc^r 
District to Tenterfield ; each has its local advocates. The latter route would pass through 
the townships of Casino and Tabulam, 

Casino is ninety miles from the sea, at the head of navigation of one of the 
branches of the Richmond River. In early days it was a rendezvous for stock-men, 
squatters and drovers, who sent their fat "mobs" across the river, where now stands the 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



239 



largest timber bridge in Australia, The whole of this district is a fine grazing countr)', 
and the rearing of cattle for the market was its primitive industry. To this was added 
timber-cutting, for the cedar, especially on the lower lands, grew luxuriantly. Timber- 
getters drew their logs .to the water's edge, and floated them in rafts down the River. 

All the best trees within easy reach of the water 
have now been cleared away ; but as one pursuit 
decayed a new one arose to take its place. 
The advent of sugar-growing altered the indus- 
trial character of the 
district, and enabled 
agriculture to replace 
the earlier pastoral 
occupation. The rich 
flats were eagerly 
taken up for planting 
purposes as soon as it 
was found that sugar 
would grow and that 
sugar w o u 1 d pa y. 
Thick scrub, which it 
was not profitable to 
clear for pastoral uses, 
disappeared under the 
woodman's axe, and 
the rich soil became 
available for tillage. 
The population 
around Casino rapidly 
increased, and the 
town has now fifteen 
hundred inhabitants; 
it is well supplied with churches, schools and a hospital, while the stores and shops 
along the broad main street give evident signs of a healthy commercial development. 

At the junction of the north and south arms of the River is the township of 
Coraki, and at the head of navigation of the northern arm stands Lismore, the port 
of the Big Scrub and the outlet for a large timber-trade. The timber-getters, forced to 
go further and further back, have often to cut their own tracks — tracks so rough and 
steep that to bring the cedar down them would to the uninitiated seem impracticable. 
But bullocks are patient animals ; a long team of them pulling together, guided and 
urged by a skilful dri\er, do wonders. Lismore is a town of a thousand people, and 
fully three thousand find profitable employment in the surrounding district. A fine iron 
bridge spans the river, and good roads are beginning to stretch out into the countrj', 
now being settled by industrious farmers. Down the Richmond, at its southern bend, is 
the township of Woodburn, the centre of a large area of sugar-growing country. 




THE KICHMUXD AT LISxMORE. 



I40 



A US TRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



The sea-port of the Richmond is Ballina, a small place at present, the land on the 
lower part of the River being poor and sandy. The bar is both difficult and dangerous, 
but an Act has now passed Parliament for improving the entrance by the construction 
of training-walls, to be extended, if necessary', as breakwaters. If the scheme proves a 
success the entrance will be made as good as that of the Clarence. The latter is the 
larger river of the two ; its entrance is already the more available, and its improvement 
has also been sanctioned by Parliament. In each case the designs have been made by 
Sir John Coode. The basins of the two rivers put together constitute one of the fairest 
and richest provinces of New South Wales ; their great want is better communication with 
the metropolis. In the valley of the Orara, one of the tributaries of the Clarence, is a 
magnificent timber forest, and when transit facilities are provided by railway, a large and 
profitable industr)' will be developed. When the trees have been removed the highly 
fertile soil will be valuable for farms. 

Grafton is the capital of the Clarence District, and indeed may be regarded as the 
queen city of the North. It is the head of navigation for large vessels, but small 




CASINO, ON THE RICHMOND. 

craft can ascend fifty miles higher ; the town is laid 
out on both sides of the River, which at this point, 
forty-five miles from the sea, is half a mile in breadth. 
It is in the centre of a sugar-growing district, while 
behind it lie prosperous squattages. In the creeks and 
mountains in the background many indications have been 
found of mineral wealth. Grafton, which with Armidale is the see of an Anglican bishop, 
is practically "The City" for a large number of people for whom the great metropolis is 
too far off. Hither they come to see and to be seen, to buy their stores, to spend their 
surplus, and to enjoy life. The surveyors laid out the town with streets of a width 
sufficient to allow of their being shady avenues as well as convenient routes for traffic. 
Trees have been planted, and are already well grown ; they give grateful coolness in the 
hot summer months, and contrast pleasantly with the glistening fronts of the buildings. 
Of these the Court House is the most considerable, although the banks are built sub- 
stantially, and taken as a whole the city is not unworthy of its fine surroundings. The 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



24T 





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population is at present about 
five thousand, but Grafton is 
one of tliose centres which are 
destined to grow. When the 
River entrance is improved, 
and railway communication is 
open with the table-land and 
the rich coast country, the 
development of the district will 
be greatly quickened. 

Around Grafton, and stud- 
ding the Clarence between it 
and the coast, a number of 
thriving villages have sprung 
up. Chatsworth Island, lying 
at the mouth of the River, is 
an important maize and sugar 
growing localit)-. The soil is 
very rich, and produces large 
crops every year. There are 
here eight sugar-mills, including 
the extensive works of the 
Colonial Sugar Company, 
which employs some hundreds 
of hands. The population is 
over twelve hundred, and its 
prosperity is gradually increa- 
sing. Lawrence, a shipping port 
for a great deal of the Tenter- 
field wool, is another river-side 
village, and the site of three 
sugar-mills. It is situated on 
the Clarence, about eighteen 
miles from the city. A little 
to the south, on the opposite 
bank of the River, is Brush- 
grove, a village with one sugar- 
mill ; and following the course 
of the Clarence Ulmarra is 
reached, with a population of 
over twenty-three hundred, and 
supporting four sugar -mills. 

To the south-west of Grafton- — from which it can be reached by coach, 
route from Uralla — is the little mining settlement of Dalmorton, with its 



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or by another 
one quartz-reef. 



242 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



South of the Clarence sugar-growing is 
not profitable. The cane thrives luxuriantly 
enough, and many settlers went into the 
cultivation with high hopes ; but there is just 
enough frost in winter to spoil the sap, and 
after repeated experiments the attempt had 
to be abandoned. But both in respect to soil 
and climate the district is admirably adapted 
to the growth of maize, and this is the great 
support of the farmers, the market for the 
produce being principally in Sydney and in 
Melbourne. 

The Nambucca and Bellingen Rivers, 
thoueh small streams, are the outlets for rich 
districts, in which there are many prosperous 
settlers whose only want is better means of 
transit. Farther south lies the large water- 
shed of the Macleay River. The port here 
is in about the same latitude as Armidale, 
but the track up to the table-land is very 
rough, hence the commercial intercourse be- 
tween the coast and the country inland is 
limited. The township of the Macleay Valley 
is Kempsey, with about fifteen hundred inhabi- 
tants. The people build great hopes for the future, first on the Government expenditure 

on the great breakwater at Trial Bay— where the chief labour prison of the colony is 

situated — and then on the fine harbour of refuge 

which will be created when the breakwater is 

finished. Three little villages are situated on the 

Macleay — Gladstone, F'rederickton and Smith- 
town, of which the last is the most important. 

Farther south again lies the similar water-shed of 

the Hastings River, of which the town is Port 

Macquarie, with a population of about nine 

hundred. It was a convict settlement in the early 

days, and many substantial buildings, for which 

it is difficult to find a use, still remain as relics 

of the olden time. The newer town is simply 

the business centre of the agricultural district 

and the pastoral background. The products of 

the district are maize, barley, oats and potatoes ; 

the cultivation of the vine is also an important 

industry. Copper has been found in the vicinity, 

and, towards the head of the River, gold in the wharf at grafton. 




A reach on the clarence. 




THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



243 



payable quantities. The geographical feature of the country is Mount Seaview, rising six 
thousand feet, and it is the proximity of this great cloud-gatherer that makes Port 
Macquarie one of the rainiest townships on the coast. 

South of the Hastings lies the valley of the Manning — not so populous as the 
country to the north, but of a somewhat similar character. There is fine timber in the 
district, and there are some mineral indications, but as yet no profitable mines. A 
number of settlements lie along the course of the Manning, among the more important 
being the towns of Croki, Cundlctown, Taree, Tinonee and Wingham, the last-named, 
which stands at the head of navigation, being the centre of a rich and prosperous agri- 
cultural district. These little centres have populations ranging from two to six hundred. 
The inlets on this coast, especially that at Camden Haven, are famous for their oysters. 

A large district — of which Port Stephens, with its town of Carrington, is the natural 
outlet — lies south of the Manning. Along the shore are the extensive Myall Lakes, on 
the banks of which are 
valuable forests. 
Stroud, the principal 
town, has a large saw- 
milling industry ; far- 
ther north is Glouces- 
ter, and to the north- 
west the gold-mining 
settlement of Cope- 
land. In the county of 
Gloucester is the great 
property of the Austra- 
lian Asrricultural Com- 
pany, but no corres- 
ponding development 

of the country has justified the policy of making such large grants. One or two small 
gold-fields have been discov^ered, but as a whole the district has not been progressive. 

These northern rivers in the coast district between Port Stephens and the northern 
border of the colony, constitute a very valuable portion of New South Wales, but as 
the communication with them is almost wholly by sea, and as all the rivers are bar-bound 
and demand a large expenditure to open them to navigation, progress has been greatly 
checked. A coast-line of railway has been proposed, and should this be carried out the 
chain of settlements along the northern coast will greatly increase in importance. 

It is customary to regard the whole of that part of the colony which lies north 
of Sydney, and extends as far as the Queensland border, as the Northern District, although 
this area really eml)races three districts. The first of these is the Hunter River District, 
which falls away from the Liverpool Range and constitutes the water-shed of the Hunter. 
This stream finds its cmboiuhiirc in the port of the same name, and upon it stands 
the coal-city of Newcastle, which thus makes a focalizing point for the trade of 
the district. The Northern District proper has its base on the Liverpool Range, falls 
away east and west from the Moonbi, and the main chain which runs parallel to the 




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THE COURT HOUSE '.aiND THE POST OFFICE AT GRAFTON. 



244 



AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 







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teau, and this mountainous 
inland-country and makes a 



coastal range, and 
follows the rocky 
backbone which is 
also the route of the 
Great Northern Rail- 
way Line, with the 
busy centres of Tam- 
worth, Armidale, Glen 
Innes and Tenterfiekl 
as successive vertebrre 
in its spinal column. 
From the Nandewar 
Rano-e it extends 
westward along the 
course of the River 
Nanioi, and on from 
the junction of this 
stream with the River 
Barwon up to the 
Queensland border, 
where its boundary 
is marked by the 
travelling-stock town 
of Mungindi. The 
town-centres along 
the branch-route are 
Werris's Creek, Gun- 
nedah and Narrabri. 
The north boundary 
line of this roughly- 
drawn triangle is 
made by the meander- 
ing rivers which cut 
off New South Wales 
from Queensland — 
the Macintyre and 
the Dumaresq. The 
eastern boundary of 
the Northern District 
is the coastal range 
which flanks the great 
New England pla- 
parallel to the Big Divide cuts the coast off from the 
tropical seaward slope which is popularly known as " The 



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Richmond FVWtR.. 







THE bUGAk 1NDU.STRY, RICHMOND RIVER. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



245 



Rivers " District, and comprises all the fertile basins of the Richmond, the Clarence, the 
Bellingcn, the Nambucca, the Macleay, the Hastings, the Manning and all the country 
north of Cape Hawke. South of this point the rivers flow south and south-east, instead 
of east, and empty into the salt-water lakes along the coast and into Port Stephens and 
Port Hunter, which constitute a middle-district between "The Rivers" and the South 
Coast. The South Coast is similarly shut off from the interior by the main range, and 
forms a district peculiar in its climate, soil and 
products from country lying in the same parallels 
of latitude on the other side of the Big Divide. 
The Southern District pro- 
per trends away along the 
railway route from Parra- 
matta to Goulburn, from 




AND THE MACLEAY RIVER. 



I 



Goulburn on to Murrumburrah, Cootamundra, Wagga Wagga and Albury, taking in the 
few branch-lines that diverge from it en route. Beyond lies an enormous tract of country, 
in shape an irregular tetragon. Its two towns at the extreme points of its bisecting 
line of railway are Bathurst and Bourke. Between these lie many important centres — 
Orange, Wellington, Dubbo and Nyngan. On its southern boundary, and leagues apart, 
are Hay and Wentworth. On its western edge is Silverton ; nearly in its centre is 
Cobar. This vast territory is known as " The West," and out towards Wilcannia, and 
beyond it, " The Far West." It is bisected in a curved line by the River Darling, 
which, after a course of many leagues over the boundless plains of the interior, empties 
itself into the Murray just below Wentworth. This splendid territory has been closely 
identified with the development of the colony from its very beginnings. When once the 
barrier of the Big Divide had been crossed the great industry founded by Macarthur 



246 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

spread itself over the vast grazing-grounds of the inland downs. The squatters were the 
early pioneers. In the wake of the squatter followed the farmer and the railway; but 
the great check to the development of the interior has been the successive terrible 
droughts. These natural foes to settlement are now being combated, and partially over- 
come, by artesian wells and water-storing tanks, maintained on stock-travelling routes by 
Government. But this splendid domain is practically virgin territory ; the problem of " The 
West" still challenges solution, and the wealth of "The West" will never be truly realized 
until a scientific system of irrigation is employed throughout its almost boundless areas. 

The Western District. 

Nearly a hundred years ago— in the month of November of the year 1788 — 
Governor Phillip went up to the head of the Harbour to choose a site for a redoubt, 
and quarters for those who were to be employed in clearing and tilling the agricultural 
land in the vicinity. Two years later— so successful had the primitive tillage been— the 
Governor issued orders for the laying out of a regular town, which received the name 
of Parramatta. It is thus, after Sydney, the oldest town in the colony. 

This old settlement, with a record beginning with the earliest history of the colony, 
lies at the head of that farthest-reaching arm of Port Jackson called the Parramatta 
River. Steamers of moderate draught run up from Sydney in about two hours, which 
are passed pleasantly enough. As the River narrows the scenery changes gradually to 
lower, less rugged and more fertile banks. From the head of navigation a tram-line 
constructed by private enterprise conveys passengers to the Park-gates on the westward 
side of the town. But there is another and .beautiful route by the north shore of 
the River through Gladesville and Ryde, or longer still by the Lane Cove Road 
through Hornsby and Pennant Hills — a delightful drive, affording magnificent views of 
the city and its surroundings; of rolling woodlands, with occasional glimpses of the 
water, and of glorious orange groves rich with fruit or odorous with bloom. 

The town of Parramatta nestles in the bosom of the hills at the head of the River, 
and is not only quaint, but unmistakably old-fashioned. The tale of a hundred years is 
written plainly on the gray stone walls still backing up the ancient public buildings ; on 
the broad leafy crowns of the beautiful oaks and the great heads of the stone-pines. 

The churches, however, as seen from the hills, have by no means an antique 
appearance, though the double-spired St, John's dates as far back as 1803. There is 
little, however, of the original structure left, save the old foundations and some portions 
of the main walls. It was built originally to imitate the old church at Reculvers on 
the Kentish coast, the last ecclesiastical edifice on which rested the eyes of Mrs. Mac- 
arthur when saying good-bye to old England, and which she piously vowed to reproduce 
in her new country if she ever lived to reach it in safety — the vow was kept. All 
Saints', with the tallest spire, is of recent date, and the handsome buildings erected by 
Roman Catholics and Congregationalists are also modern, typifying a new generation, in 
contrast with the oaks, and the cottages they overshadow 

Among the buildings to be noted are the Mercury newspaper office, the banks, the 
commodious public offices, the old Court House and the Post Office, deeply alcoved along 
its front; the old-fashioned and well-named "Woolpack" Inn, lying behind its broad lawn 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



247 



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fringed with tall and shady trees, has been recently turned into police-barracks, and a 
new structure has usurped the historic title. Primary schools, both public and denomina- 



j^g AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

tional. are good and commodious. But the one educational establishment whose history is 
inseparable from that of Parramatta, and whose influence extends far and wide throughout 
the colony, is the old King's School, under the direct control of the Episcopal Church. 
Founded in the year 1832, when Sir Richard Bourke was the head of the State and 
Bishop Broughton of the Church, it immediately became the great Church of England 
school of the colony. It is by no means a beautiful building, having suffered many 
additions wherein utility was the primary object. The excellence of its management is, 
however, evidenced by the positions of many old pupils, now in the foremost ranks of 
social, professional and political life. 

Manufactures in the town have been in a small way successful. There are tile 
and pipe works, three establishments where wool is woven into tweed and a soap and 
candle factor)-. In early days linen was made from llax grown on the Government farm, 
but that useful industr)- died out. Conspicuous in the old town are the penal and 
eleemosynary establishments — general and criminal lunatic asylums accommodating together 
eight hundred and fifty patients, a reformatory for girls, a benevolent asylum, a commo- 
dious gaol, a district hospital and a hospital for erysipelas. Quite early in the history of 
the colony, Parramatta, having a natural water-supply, was selected for the pauper and 
criminal institutions, and most of them have been retained to this day. 

To all visitors of cultured, artistic, aesthetic or even historic tastes, the chief glory 
of Parramatta is the Park — the old Domain, admittance to which is by an archway built 
in the Tudor style. Within the enclosure oaks tower aloft and shake their leaves in 
the light summer breeze with a cool and pleasant rustle, and willows in the damp flats 
bend their boughs, mighty in their gift of perfect shade. Pines from Norfolk Island, 
only less beautiful and grand than those in the Sydney Gardens ; pines from southern 
Italy ; pines from the Californian slopes, and pines from Scottish and Norwegian hills, stand 
tall, strong and shady, contrasting with the trees of native birth still lingering beside 
the shallow and generally turgid waters of the characteristic Australian creek. The firs 
grew from cones, the oaks from acorns, the willows from slips, which Mr. George 
Suttor, Australia's first gardener, brought over in his plant-house on the Porpoise at the 
beginning of the present century. 

The Park-lands slope gently upward to a round knoll, where stands a plain old 
house about which cling many historic associations. It is the old Government House, 
the country residence of the sailor Governors, and of four at least of their successors — the 
.place of their rest, and frequently of their most active labours. It was while walking in 
these grounds that John Macarthur met Governor Bligh in the earliest days of a 
troubled Administration. In one of these old parlours they sat down together to break- 
fast with ex-Governor King, and when the meal was ended they walked across to that 
other old house below the town by the River-side, ami inspected on the Elizabeth Farm 
the little flock of sheep mustered on that estate. We can imagine the sheep folded in 
the evening for fear of the wild dogs, and the two distinguished officials looking curiously 
at the little flock whose development has been the main cause of the larger prosperity 
of Australia. It was at this town also that Governor Denison fixed his observatory. 

It has been well said that even had Parramatta been the least convenient of all 
towns the beauty of its surroundings would have made it a desirable dwelling-place. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



249 



Old residents say with pride, " We can drive around throufjh forty miles of oranges," 
and the statement is fairly accurate. From Parramatta to Ryde, Hornsby, Pennant and 
Baulkham Hills, and towards Prospect, orange groves fringe the road in almost endless 
succession. The trees are planted chiefly on the rich ridges or the higher eastern slopes 
of the hills. English fruit-trees, caring little for an occasional bite of frost, do better in 
the hollows. The inland drives to Baulkham Hills, or through Toongabbie towards 
Prospect, are charming, and it is as pleasant to be about Parramatta in September as in 
Kent in April. The orange is a winter fruit ; in spring the trees are laden with their 
white and fragrant blossoms ; the green fruit forms and hangs during the summer, 
getting its golden colour as autumn begins, and becoming fully ripe as the winter 
deepens. But the seasons are so mild in this temperate climate that they intermix, and a 
tree may often be seen bearing at the same time the lingering fruit of last sea.son and 
the blossoms and young fruit of the next. 

The country lying between Parramatta 
and the Hawkesbury River is for the most 
part gently undulating. It was easily tra- 
versed in the earlier days, but being thickly 
timbered was comparatively neglected ; the 
attention of the colonists being naturally 
drawn first to the rich alluvial land on the 
banks of the River, at once available for the 
growth of maize, wheat and hay. The prin- 
cipal track from Parramatta to this early 
granary of the colony ran north-west to 
Windsor, a town occupying an area of rising 
ground at the point where the River turns 
northward, and which was then the head of 
navigation. A second track, which crossed 
the Hawkesbury, went westward to Penrith, 
and from this place the explored route over 
the Blue Mountains was opened. Tillage on 
the banks of the Hawkesbury, early begun, 
has never ceased, for the deep rich soil seems incapable of exhaustion, though several 
times the settlers have seen their farms under water, having to run from their cottages, 
or, when too late for flight, to be rescued in boats. Back from this alluvial belt the 
land is of a poorer quality, though on the tops of the hills, where some fairly good 
red soil is to be found, many patches were cleared for wheat, till the persistent appearance 
of rust compelled the abandonment of this description of crop. 

Por many years the greater part of the district was subdivided into large grazing- 
paddocks in which the sheep and cattle that had travelled down from the back-country 
rested and fattened for market. On the western road a good deal of land has of late 
years been utilized for vineyards and orangeries, especially in the neighbourhood of 
Seven Hills, and still mare recently this land has become valuable for residential purposes, 
particularly for those who desire a larger block than is easily obtainable eastward of 




ST. MATTHEW S CHURCH, WINDSOR. 



250 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Parramatta. The railway line as far as Blacktown serves the purpose both of the 
western and north-western roads, the branch to Richmond turning northwards from this 
junction. On the route is the station of Riverstone, where private enterprise has 
established a successful slaughtering and meat-preserving establishment. The flocks and 
herds on their way down from the northern pastures are intercepted at this point and 
sent on as dressed meat to Sydney. 

Windsor, which ne.xt to Parramatta is the oldest of the country towns, still retains 
the characteristics of early days. The ivy creeps over the old brick walls; the trees 
look almost weary with age in many neglected gardens. Old men in checked cotton 
shirts, moleskin trousers and cabbage-tree hats, sit beneath the long verandahs of one- 
storeyed inns and tell tales of the old, old times. Characteristic, too, of those times is 
Sl Matthew's Church, built substantially on high ground in the basilican style of 
architecture. The foundation-stone of this church was laid, says the official record, a 
little after sunset on Sunday, the nth of October, 1817, by Governor Macquarie, and 
his speech on that spring evening was short and very much to the point. He saw the 
"holey dollar" (the Spanish dollar with the centre cut out) safely deposited in the 
bottle, he tried the stone with the square, tapped it with the mallet, and saying " God 
bless St. Matthew's Church " left it in peace, but not, as shown in the sequel, in 
security. For that night sundry rascals uplifted the stone, broke the botde and abstracted 
the dollar. His Excellency, holding to the belief that coin of the realm was the only 
sure foundation for the Church, began the proceedings dc novo, called together the whole 
of the respectable inhabitants and the notabilities of the vice-regal court, addressed them 
in a pathetic manner, passed a high eulogy on the clergy and planted other dollars, 
which, alas for the morality of the times, were within two days likewise abstracted. 
After this it appears that the Governor contented himself with fulminating against the 
probable robbers, and permitting the walls to rise without the silver basis. Yet no good 
luck attended this. For we read that " two years after, the walls of the building had 
to be pulled down to the very foundation, owing to some defect in their construction, 
and another building of much larger dimensions and of the best materials was commenced 
on its site." This church is the St. Matthew's of to-day. 

Four miles west of Windsor is Richmond, another village dating from the first 
decade of the colony. It is not so busy now as it has been — for the railways have 
diverted the great trade on which its early prosperity was built — but it still shows 
evidence, not only of past vigour, but of present vitality. Two great stock-routes 
converge on the slope of the hills on the other side of the stream. By the northern 
one, known as the Bulga Road, came down sheep and cattle from Patrick's Plains on 
the Hunter River, along a rough and somewhat grassless track. The other route came 
from the " Far West," and crossed the Blue Mountains by what is still known, after the 
surveyor who discovered it, as Bell's Line. This route takes the dividing ridge between 
the waters of the Grose and those of the Colo, and joins the other line near Mount 
Clarence. Richmond, therefore, was the gate-way through which for many years passed 
the greater portion of the live stock destined for the Sydney market. The Kurrajong 
Hills look down upon Richmond from the northern side of the River. Their seaward 
slope is covered with singularly fertile soil, originally thickly-timbered and clothed with 



THE TOWNS OF NFAV SOUTH WALES. 



251 




a dense undergrowth of rich scrub vegetation. Most of this has now been cleared away, 
and orange-trees have been planted to the summit — an elevation of nearly two thousand 
feet. The drive up the steep ascent is very beautiful, the undulating ground of the 
fertile lower slopes presenting a landscape of remarkably soft and varied aspect. The 
Hills have long been celebrated for the purity and mildness of their air, and are a favourite 
resort for invalids. Over the ridge to the west the aspect of the country instantly 
changes. Rugged 
sandstone comes to 
the surface, and re- 
mains characteristic of 
Bell's Line, which is 
broken only by the 
rich patches of Mount 
Tomah and Mount 
Wilson, where the trap- 
rock has burst through 
the sandstone, produ- 
cinsj the soil that has 
given birth to magni- 
ficent tree-ferns and a 
rich jungle of semi- 
tropical appearance. 

From Blacktown 
Junction the Great Western Railway continues through slightly undulating country. Rooty 
Hill was once a thickly-timbered elevation, and still yields a supply of fire-wood and 
railway-sleepers ; but it has become more celebrated for its coursing-ground, a great 
lover of sport having fixed his head-quarters here. The line crosses South Creek, the 
valley of which is in flood-time filled with back-water. After this the country is moderately 
level as far as Penrith. This is one of the old-fashioned road-side townships — a place 
where the carriers used to rest before starting for the heavy pull up the mountains, or 
after coming down. Delay, too, was sometimes caused by the River being swollen by 
heavy rains, when the punt could not be worked. 

Above Penrith is a beautiful reach of the Nepean, with still, deep water for about 
fifteen miles up to its junction with the Warragamba. For a mile or two above the 
bridge the banks are moderately low, but gradually become steep and rocky. During 
the great floods the scene here is magnificent. The waters that come rolling down, 
gathered from an enormous water-shed, are piled up between the steep rocky banks, 
because there is no lateral discharge for them. Mood-marks on the trees show that the 
river has risen sixty and even eighty feet above the ordinary height ; but as it rushes 
out of the gorge and spreads out over the low land, which is mostly on the eastern 
side, the level sinks rapidly. 

To the west of the River lie the Emu Plains, gently sloping to the foot of the 
hills. They are mostly above flood-level ; the soil is fertile, and this mile-wide belt was 
early occupied and tilled. It has never ceased to be profitable to the farmer. Where 



STUD SHEEP OF THE MUDGEE DISTRICT. 



252 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




the Plains end the mountains at once begin. In the old coaching-days there were little 
more than road-side inns all the way until the mountain was descended on the other 
side, when agricultural and pastoral occupation once more began. But since the railway 
has been at work some coal-mines have been opened up, hotels have been built, and 
little townships have sprung up, • such as at Springwood, Katoomba, Blackheath and 
Mount Victoria. The older road, which was superseded by a better one down Mount 
Victoria, made its descent into the western country at Mount York ; but the railway 
engineers decided on going west and making the descent, not into the Vale of Hartley, 
but into the Valley of Lithgow. The line, therefore, after passing Mount Victoria, keeps 
its elevation for some distance, running along the Darling Causeway— the dividing ridge 
between the head of the Grose and the Valley of the Lett. On the left is a branch 
constructed by the Hartley Kerosene Company ; the line makes a steep descent into 

the Vale of Hartley, the trucks 
being drawn up by a rope. 

After all the rugged gorges 
at the head of the Grose have 
been passed, the point of junc- 
tion with Bell's Line of road 
is reached at Mount Wilson 
Station. The railway then tun- 
nels under Mount Clarence and 
emerges on a spur looking 
down upon Lithgow. To make 
the descent the engineers had 
recourse once more to a "zig 
zag" — a much more difficult 
piece of work than that by 
w h i c h the mountain was 
climbed on the eastern side. 
The road down is in turn 
sidling, viaduct, tunnel and cutting. Below there are two or three points of vantage 
whence may be seen the manner in which the line sweeps down the face of this bold 
inland cliff — the three ledges, one above another, being commanded in one view. 

At the foot of the "Zig-zag" are the two adjoining townships of Eskbank and 
Lithgow. We are here at the western outcrop of the immense coal-seams which 
underlie the whole of the Blue Mountains, and it is this which gives character to the 
industries of the place. At several points the scams have been attacked, sometimes by 
adits driven into the hills, sometimes by shallow shafts. A good market for the coal 
is found along the line of railway both west and east, as well as in Sydney. The 
existence of iron ore in the neighbourhood naturally suggested the possibility of smelting- 
works, but the enterprise has met with many difficulties. The ore is scattered, and not 
cheaply raised, the lime has to be brought from a distance, and colonial labour is 
costly. It has been impossible, therefore, to produce iron as cheaply as it can be 
imported. But the basis of the industry has been laid, and its further development only 




THE ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL AT 13ATHUKST. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



253 



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< 






awaits more favourable conditions. Meanwhile a good deal of work has been done for 
the Government in re-rolling old rails. Lithgow Valley is also well supplied with a 
great variety of clay ; a successful pottery has been established, which is equipped with 



J54 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



the most recent machinerj-. The coarser productions are naturally those for which there 
is the greater demand, and drain-pipes, tiles and bricks are the articles principally 
manufactured. Enough, however, has been done with pottery of the finer kinds to show 
the potentialities of the industry, and with abundance of the best clay close to coal, 
Lithgow has its hope in reserve. 

Beyond Lithgow is the pretty, old road-side village of Bowenfels, and still farther 
on Wallerawang — a township lying in the centre of a district rich in mineral wealth. 
.■\t this point a branch line strikes off in a north-westerly direction to the town of 
Mudgee, about eighty miles distant. The route lies through somewhat rugged country, 
which is only sparsely populated. The line runs not far from the dividing ridge, and skirts 
the heads of the streams running down into the Colo. On the western side stretches 
a large area of country unmistakably auriferous, in which rich patches of gold have 
been found. The enthusiasm for mining has, however, greatly fallen off, and a systematic 
investigation of the district awaits the time when under-ground work can be carried on 
more economically. At Cudgegong, which is near the railway route, cinnabar ore has 
been found, but only in quantities to tempt, not to reward, the enterprise of the miner. 
Before the line reaches Mudgee the character of the country improves, and a fine 
grazing district comes into view. The town itself exhibits a curious mixture of the old 
and the new. It was an early centre of pastoral occupation, but it is now showing the 
effects of railway communication. The trees on the River are old, the crumbling cottages 
on the outskirts are old, the ways of the people savour of old colonization, while the 
new churches, banks and public buildings appear as innovations on an established order. 

Mudgee is the first place on 
a western journey where the 
true bush - life is reached ; 
men with genuine Australian 
swags on their backs pass 
frequently ; station-hands, 
lithe, spare, and brown from 
much riding under hot skies, 
come in booted and spurred. 
On the road b)- the Race- 
course a trim jockey exercises 
a well-clothed racer, and past 
him rides a " cockatoo-boy " 
on a palfrey whose hide knows 
no more of grooming than 
that of a kangaroo. Mudgee, with all its old-world air, has the capabilities of a beautiful 
town, being laid out on a rich flat, surrounded by well-grassed, highly-timbered hills. 

It is more than fifty years since the first .settlers came to Mudgee. They obtained 
large grants of the rich soil, and all throve on them ; they have passed away, and their 
sons gather the fruit of their labours. Their homesteads stand on the surroundincj hills, 
three or four miles from the town— substantial, comfortable places, with broad and shad)' 
trees on the lawns, and roses in the gardens, making Australian November fragrant as 




THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHliURAL AT BATHURST. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



255 




English June. The climate and soil are similar to those of the eastern valleys of the 
Himalayas — the cradle of the merino race — the table-lands of Spain, and the high lands 
of Algiers, and were therefore specially suitable for stud-flocks. The best available blood 
was early taken up there, and good breeding was backed by liberal feeding, and thus 
was produced the dis- 
tinct and profitable 
strain of merinos now 
so much sought after 
by flock- masters 
throughout Australia. 
The sheep are small 
in size, but the fleeces 
are dense and the 
staple is fine. It is in 
requisition for the deli- 
cate fabrics of the 
l-'rench looms, and has 
realized in the market 
over four shillings a 
pound. The effect of 
climate in some parts 
of Australia, both on 
the frame-work of the 
animals and the quality 
of the wool, is very 
quickly seen by a de- 
terioration in type. 

Fresh strains are therefore regularly needed. To supply these, the choice stock is carried 
away to less favoured districts, and there is consequently a perpetual demand for Mudgee 
sheep. Buyers from all parts of the Continent gather at the sale of stud-rams, which makes 
an annual festival in the town. At these fairs, and at the races, Mudgee seems suddenly to 
start into life. The streets are busy, the hotels are full. Stylish equipages roll down from 
the hills, and colonial lads scamper along the dusty roads on steeds that an Arab sheik 
might envy. lUit at other times all is very dull. Morning, noon and night the town 
seems half asleep, and it is a matter of marvel where the people come from who on 
Sundays fill the really handsome and commodious churches, which in Mudgee are far 
superior to any other buildings. Some of the banks are substantial and handsome, but 
on the usual public edifices no money has been uselessly wasted, nor have store-keepers 
raised any very notable structures. The School of Arts is a fine building, well equipped, 
and, what is not always the case with these institutions, out of debt. 

The soil and climate of Mudgee are favourable to the growth of many English 
flowers, and seem also to be well adapted to the cultivation of the grape. The medals 
in the cellars of a local vigneron are eloquent of the success that has already been 
achieved, and indicate the possibilities of the future. Maize grows freely, and yields its 




THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AT BATHURST. 



2-6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

abundant harvest within a few months of the sowing, and hay runs up a luxuriant crop. 
In a good spring season all the flats are green with the young Indian corn, or fragrant 
with the odouc of new-mown hay ; while amongst the rich native grasses run the clean- 
looking sheep just relieved of their weighty and valuable fleeces. Around Mudgee there 
has been a good deal of gold-mining, but the known alluvial deposit has nearly all been 
gathered, and the development of quartz-reefs proceeds but slowly. There are indications 
of copper and silver, and also of coal. A line of railway has been surveyed up the 
Colo Valley from Richmond, which would strike the Mudgee Line about Rylstone, and a 
far easier gradient could be secured by this route than obtains on the present railway. 
A trunk-line from Sydney may in the future follow the course of this valley, in which case 
the Mudgee Line could be extended to the north-west. At present the town is a railway- 
terminus, but does not concentrate very much traffic, because Dubbo catches the inland trade. 

From Wallerawang westward to Bathurst the railway line runs through undulating 
and sometimes rather rough country. The soil is of poor quality, though here and there 
are clearings and little farms. At Rydal may be seen drays loading for the Sunny 
Corner silver-mines, which for a time were very productive, a hundred tons of pure 
silver having been obtained during a period of six months. But the lode has become 
less productive, and none of the other promising "claims" in the neighbourhood has as yet 
realized expectations. The district, however, is of a strongly-marked mineral character, and 
though eager speculators are quickly discouraged, it is the opinion of geologists that 
valuable mines will yet be developed in this locality'. 

Farther to the west is Tarana, the station from which visitors usually start for the 
Jenolan Caves, although other routes are now open. These caves will be described in a 
separate chapter. The road falls as the Bathurst Plains come in sight — that rich instal- 
ment of the great western country which gladdened the eyes of the first explorers, and 
gave a stimulus to early pastoral occupation. 

Bathurst has naturally become the capital of the West, for its site was well chosen. 
Placed on the banks of the Macquarie it has a secure supply of fresh water, and when 
viewed from the city the surrounding country is seen to be a girdle of undulating hills, 
some bare, some highly-timbered. The soil is rich, and fails to yield its harvest only 
in those years of drought when Nature, to put a little restraint on the avarice of man, 
compels a fallow. The value of the land was keenly appreciated by the early settlers, 
and the homesteads of the great proprietors crown the hills that make a circle round 
the town, which is placed on the north bank of the River, and is the centre of a 
district which from the first has been one of rural industry. Upon that its prosperity 
still mainly depends, though it has also been the centre to which the business of several 
mining districts converged. Hill End, Sofala, Turon and Trunkey have all at different 
times been "rushed" by miners. The glory of these gold-fields, however, has for the 
present departed, and their thorough development awaits the day when mining shall be 
more scientifically and economically conducted. 

Each of the four great denominations is well represented in Bathurst. The Anglican 
Church of All Saints' is perhaps the finest building ; and, surrounded by exceptionally 
well-kept grounds, it is a chief ornament of the town. But more pleasant to the eye is the 
square-towered cathedral of the Roman Catholics, by reason of the great trees growing 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES 



257 



close beside it, and tempering with their deep green tints the dull red of its massive 
brick walls. The priest walking there at even-tide studiously perusing his breviary, the 
sisters in the neighbouring convent chanting the Angelus, the rolling organ with its deep 
and solemn tones pealing through open windows and doors, together form a picture and 

leave a memory singularly in contrast with the ordinary 
sentiment of the inner Austral land. 

But the block of buildings the Bathurst people 
regard with most pride is situated in the centre of the 
town, and comprises the whole of the public offices— 




the Lands, Police, 
Post and Telegraph 
Offices, together 
with the Court 
House and the Gaol. 
A dome, well-propor- 
tioned, though some- 



what lacking in ele 



THE SUNNY CORNER SILVER-MINES, 
vation, rises from 

the centre of the block. The wings, formed by long corridors, are pleasantly broken and 
diversified by open quadrangles, planted with trees and flowers. The block is compact, 
convenient, sufficiently ornate, and yet free from any air of pretension. 

The Hospital, built on the breadth of another hill about a mile to the north, is in 
every respect a creditable establishment. There is no building of the kind in the 
colony better fitted or better situated for hospital-work. The wards are lofty and 
roomy, with windows opening on to an unimpeded view of the fresh green downs. The 
architectural effect is good, the red brick and the white stone having been blended in 
an excellent modern Gothic design. 

All Samts' Grammar School, nearer the city, is an important local institution, with 
a creditable record of good work well done ; and the State School, centrally situated, 
IS a worthy representative of the system which levies a tax of one pound sterling a 
head on every unit of the population for educational work. The Roman Catholic College 
of St. Stanislaus takes a high rank amongst kindred institutions. The School of Arts, 
m which educational work and recreation are combined, is one of the best of its kind 



,58 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

out of the metropolis. The commercial buildings, however, make no particular display; 
banks, insurance offices and stores are commodious and sufficient, but not imposing. 
Manufactures have not secured much footing in the town, though a few tall chimneys 
indicate flour-mills, breweries and agricultural implement works. A mile up the Macquarie 
is the pumping-engine which supplies water to the town. 

The railway from Bathurst goes westward in the direction of Blayney. For the first 
few miles it follows the direction of a pleasant road beside the water-course of George's 
V'ale. the creek winding in long curves fringed with willows. On either side are clover- 
paddocks and corn-fields, orchards and gardens; homesteads of all sorts— from the substan- 
tial house of the wealthy settler to the mud-walled cabin of the humble tenant who 
rents a little patch of rich alluvial land. After continuing thus for eight miles the line 
enters rougher country which does not invite to agriculture, and which even in a good 
year is only scantily clothed with short wiry grass. The hills are sparsely timbered and 
strewn with boulders. The township of Blayney is built chiefly on a flat by the side 
of the Belubula River. It is a moderately prosperous place, because at no great 
distance there is some fine agricultural land. At Blayney there is also a railway junc- 
tion, the main line going off to the north-west ; but towards the south-west there is a 
cross-country line connecting the Western and Southern Railways. This branch line runs 
through Carcoar. Cowra and Young to Murrumburrah, and affords a direct route from 
the colony of Victoria to the western slopes of New South Wales, and thence on to 
Bourke. It is likely to become a great route for the transmission of live stock from 
Queensland to the Melbourne market. The first considerable township on this line is 
Carcoar, the centre of a mining district, situated in a deep mountain valley ; some en- 
gineering difficulties had to be encountered to make the descent. The next important 
place is Cowra, in the valley of the Lachlan. Prior to the advent of the iron-horse it 
was little more than a halting-place for carriers and drovers, but the railway makes a 
speedy change where the land is fertile. Selections are taken up, farms are tilled, the 
old camping-place becomes a village, and in a few years the village grows to a town. 

Westward of Cowra lies Grenfell, once a prosperous alluvial gold-field, where shafts and 
batteries still make a busy show, though the maize and wheat-fields and the rich red soil 
of the newly-cleared land indicate that the larger hope of the future lies in agriculture. 

Twenty miles beyond Blayney along the railway line is Orange. The route trends 
over elevated ground, the line at one part being over three thousand feet above the 
level of the sea. Clearings and paddocks are to be seen all along the line, and at 
some intervening villages, such as Millthorpe and Springhill, large areas of land have 
been brought under tillage. Near the town the country is more open, and the rich red 
volcanic soil is well adapted for every description of agriculture. Orange lies among 
grassy hills, over which tower the Canoblas, capped through several months of the year 
with snow. There is no river near, but there is an abundant rain-fall, and water is seldom 
scarce. The district is commonly said to have the most "English" appearance of any in 
the colony, the farms and the vegetation reminding one of English rural scenes. The range 
of temperature is that of our mountain climate generally^hot in the middle of the day in 
summer, but cool in the evening, and very cold and bracing in winter. In the gardens 
and fields the influence of the cooler climate is very noticeable. The daphnes, magnolias 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



259 



and oleanders of the Sydney gardens are absent, but the hawthorne hedges are vigorous, 
currants and gooseberries come to perfection, and the wheat harvest is later than that 
of Bathurst. The district was taken up for a cattle-station about the year 1830, and 
made a great start at the time of the gold fever of 185 1. It was at Lewis Ponds, a 
small tributary of Summer Hill Creek, about three miles from 
the town, that Mr. E. H. Hargraves made his first discovery of 
Australian gold, and this set everybody on the alert to look for 




THE LACHLAX RIVER, AM) THE TOWN UK l-URliES. 



auriferous indi- 
cations. Near 
Lucknow some 
gravel carted on 
to a newly-con- 
structed bridge 
attracted the 
attention of a 
few C ornish- 
men, who during 
the night carried it down to the Creek, washed it, and in the morning sold the results 
of their night's labour for sixty pounds a man. Of course there was a wild "rush" to the 
pit from which the gravel had been taken. Claims were "pegged out" in all directions. 
Shop-men, shoe-makers and tailors took to digging holes and washing gravel in nail-cans, 
buckets and tubs. Little fortimes were ([uickly made and quickly spent. A similar 
discovery afterwards took place at Ophir, followed by a similar excitement till the 
alluvial patch was worked out. Orange, as the local centre, grew rapidly during the 
gold-digging days, but subsequently had a non-progressive time. The construction of the 
railway gave a great stimulus to agricultural development ; forests were cleared and 



,6o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

land was tilled, and the basis of a permanent prosperity was laid. Mining, too, was 
resumed, and auriferous ground that had been hastily scratched in the first instance was 
more thoroughly examined and systematically worked. Several gold-bearing reefs yielding 
large and continuous returns were opened. At Lucknow some excellent mining machinery 
is employed. Rock-drills are worked by compressed air, and the free gold is treated in 
the usual way; but the more complex ores of antimony, silver, lead and gold are sent 
to Germany for treatment by a special process. 

South-west from Orange run some of the head-waters of the Lachlan River, which 
rise in the Canoblas, traversing in their course the old mining districts of Canowindra 
and Cargo, and several fertile agricultural areas. A good coach-road runs to Forbes, 
which is situated eighty-four miles distant on the Lachlan River, and along this route 
a railway line has been surveyed. The land on either side is capable of supporting a 
large number of settlers, the climate is good, and the soil, except in the broad patches 
of mineral countrj-, exceptionally rich. Forbes was the scene of one of the successful 
Australian gold-rushes. Diggers from the older fields of Young and Grenfell hastened 
thither ; life for a time was wild and impetuous ; miners worked with the excitement of 
gamblers, and the human vultures that crowd around successful diggers to ease them of 
their cash fared well. Hut when the alluvial ground was worked out the excitement all 
passed away ; the wild life has gone, and the steadier existence of farmers and squatters 
has succeeded. For a time there was some doubt whether the soil, rich as it was, 
would grow wheat ; but all doubts on that point have long been settled. With an 
average rain-fall wheat yields from twenty to thirty bushels an acre, and oats from 
forty to sixty ; potatoes and maize thrive well, and both soil and climate seem specially 
suited to tobacco. Forbes, as the centre of this rich district, is already a considerable 
town. It is built on moderately elevated land on the northern l)ank of the River, which 
winds along the edge of a broad and fertile Hat. This is occasionally submerged ; 
indeed in times of high-flood the Lachlan spreads above and below the town miles wide, 
filling billabongs and ana-branches innumerable, and storing water for dry seasons. Any 
damage done by these floods is abundantly compensated by the wealth they leave behind 
them. Rich fiats are on either side of the River, and the country in the rear yields 
excellent pasture. Some of the largest sheep-stations in the colony lie between Forbes, 
Condobolin and Booligal farther down stream — Burrawang Station, about twenty-five 
miles distant, having a freehold of about two hundred and fifty thousand acres, and 
shearing in favourable seasons about two hundred thousand sheep. A railway line has 
been surveyed from Forbes to Wilcannia, on the River Darling, the central township 
from which roads go north-west and south-west, through a dry but pastoral district, to 
the gold and silver bearing countr)' of the Barrier Ranges. 

Twenty-two miles north-west of Forbes is Parkes, a sister town with a \ery similar 
origin and history — first a camping-place in the old pastoral days, then invaded by a 
"rush" of gold-diggers, and finally a township with a settled population depending 
chiefly on mining and agriculture. The town will shortly be accessible by railway, as 
an Act has been passed for a line from Molong through Parkes to Forbes. Cudal, 
nearer to the Western Line, is another prosperous and pleasantly-situated village ; it 
is twenty-eight miles from Orange, and in the district of Molong. All these western 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



26] 



settlements focalize naturally upon Orange, bringing into that healthy and promising 
town the produce from their farms, stations and mines. Westward from Orange the 
descent from the high land is rapid. Looking from the windows of the railway carriage 
in the earlier stage of the journey, a lightly-wooded country is seen sloping away towards 
the setting sun ; the pasture still green even in the 
early days of midsummer, the wild-flowers starring 
the grass, and occasionally almost covering it with 
their colour and light. A little lower down and a 

wash of the more sombre tints of the Australian 




WELLINGTON. 



summer is felt rather than perceived over all the landscape. The cool fresh mountain 
air is passing away, and the heat arises from the plains, now so rapidly approached. 
Gray-trunked box-trees sparsely stud the broad downs, together with iron-bark and gum, 
and also the beautiful kurrajongs, closely cropped for food during the years of drought, 
but bursting with the first return of rain into fresh and luxuriant foliage. Thirty- 



262 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

five miles on. and a thousand feet down from Orange, is the mining village of Iron- 
barks, and twenty-one miles farther, the town of Wellington. On cither side of the 
line farms have been established ; in dry years the crop is a failure, but in a good 
season the soil is wonderfully prolific, though too often even plentiful rains have their 
troubles for the famier, who sees his hay, oats or wheat beaten down by a heavj 
storm just as he begins to count on an abundant compensation for all his losses during 
the years of drought. Much of the soil is decomposed trap, over-lying the limestone 
and granite at the base of the hills, while the rich alluvial deposits brought down by 
the Macquarie and the Hell Rivers cover all the flats. The town is at the junction of 
the two streams, and is built on the spot where an outpost of the earliest pastoral 
system was established more than half a century ago. Agriculture comes ciuite up to 
the town, the wheat-fields lying almost at the doors of the stores and mills. The hills, 
which are the farthest-extending feet of the westerly-reaching spurs of the Great 
Divide, come down almost to the river's bank in lightly-wooded knolls and open braes, 
above which rise craggy and boulder-strewn slopes, with an occasional cone suggestive 
of the source of the fertilizing trap-rock. The foliage of these hills is more varied than 
is usual in the Australian bush. In the caverns and ravines the geologist finds a field 
for endless research, for long before the human interest of the world began, into these 
limestone caves came those monstrous beasts whose proportions to the animals of to-day 
are as those of the sons of Anak to pigmies. The tooth of a diprotodon has been found 
there with some fragmentary bones of an ccJiidna — whose complete bulk must have been 
beyond that of any of his tribe we know to-daj', as much as the New Zealand moa 
surpasses that quaint relic of his genus, the apteryx — and a bone of an old-world 
marsupial, which Professor Owen pronounces to have been of the lion species. There 
was large life in Australia in the days when creatures such as these came down into 
the mountain-caverns to die. Jungle and forest-growths, rivers rolling through broad 
savannahs prevailed the;n where now is sometimes seen but the dust of drought, and 
the marsh-film of meagre streams. 

The buildings of Wellington are substantial and comfortable, rather than beautiful ; 
they are all of brick, and of that deep-red tint to which most of the inland clays seem 
to burn. The hotels are broad-verandahed and cool, the churches roomy and sombre in 
aspect, the banks and insurance offices somewhat ornate and metropolitan in style, and 
the stores generally of the old colonial order. Lying grouped in the valley amid the 
trees by the River's edge and the rich foliage of orchards and gardens, they form a 
charming picture — a pleasing head and crown to the valley — which stretches on inland 
for many a mile. The railway crosses the river by a bridge, the foundations of which 
were laid with difficulty, as the engineers had to pierce an enormous stratum of drift — 
an indication of an old geologic age. Beyond the town are fiat patches of rich green corn, 
acres of tobacco-plant, and breadths of wheat on a larger scale of farming than is generally 
seen in the colony. At Mar>'vale, twelve miles from Wellington, there are farms of a 
thousand and twelve hundred acres all under cultivation, and despite continual droughts, and 
occasional losses through heavy rain-storms, the farmers are prosperous and hopeful. With 
intervals of quartz and granite country, with the usual clothing of stunted forest and scant 
herbage, the good soil runs right down the Macquarie to Dubbo, thirty miles to the north-west. 



I 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



263 



Dubbo is ordinarily associated with pastoral work on a larj^c scale, with fierce 
heats, long droughts, and that old Australian life which knew of little beyond mutton, 
wool and beef, and the labour by which they are produced. In its earliest days it was 
the natural business-centre for the sheep and cattle stations of the lower Bogan and 




a 
D 

Q 



D 
C 

u 
< 
IS 

u 
B 
H 



the Macquarie. A slab-walled, bark-roofed shanty was the primitive style of building, 
giving way in the ordinary course of development to the one-storeyed public-house, with 
separate ends for squatters and bush-men. It is almost half a centurj' since the first store 
was opened at Dubbo, and forty years since the earliest holders of Crown grants tried any 
experiment in agriculture. The drought-proof salt-bush \yas high and dense on all the 



264 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

plains, and the millions of kurrajongs, myalls and vnilgas had never been cropped on 
their lower boujjhs by the cattle in seasons of distress. Nature's reserves were sufficient 
to stand the severest trials, and the only anxiety of teamsters and bullock-drivers, even 
in the driest seasons, was to make from water to water. Still a little farming was 
successfully carried on, the grain was carted thirty tedious miles to the Wellington mill, 
and back again as flour. Hut after the Land Act of 1861 many selectors settled on 
the fertile soil. In 1.S72 the town had become so considerable that it was proclaimed a 
municipality, and stores, hotels and banks followed in the wake of the settlers. I'^or a 
few subsequent years there were abundant rains ; the country was prosperous and ricli 
in promise ; sheep and cattle multiplied on the land. Not only frontages and fertile flats, 
but back-blocks, naturally waterless, were taken up and fully stocked. The fat years 
passed, a long lean time succeeded — a monotonous drought, broken only by one interval, 
and lasting for ten years ; and yet, in spite of heavy losses, the occupation of the 
country has survived the test. 

The town of Dubbo is a busy one, with enlarging industries, and about it arc all 
the indications of stout-hearted occupation and steady advance. Nor is this surprising, 
for it is not a village set in a pastoral wilderness, but the farthest western outpost of 
prosperous agriculture. All down the Macquarie anything from maize to wheat, and from 
cotton to potatoes, may be grown abundantly. For many miles along its farthest course 
the River consists of a series of basin-like depressions, sl'ut in and divided by bars of 
rock ; at varying distances below its present bed extends a stratum of loose drift or 
gravel, which, touched by a shaft or boring-tube, yields a pure and never-failing supply 
of water. The township of I3ubbo lies within one of these basins, and numerous wind- 
mills in ever green gardens irrigate the thirsty soil. The Dubbo basin was probably at 
one time a lake or marsh, similar to those still existing lower down the River, and 
this was gradually filled up by the detritus l^rought down b)- the higher levels, a 
narrow channel only being kept open. The surface-river is but the visible drainage- 
channel ; the permanent waters lie below, saved from pollution and heat by the easily- 
pierced coating of over-lying earth. This under-ground supply of water has an important 
bearing on the future of the district; as, in addition to meeting all domestic demands, 
it will furnish enough for a limited irrigation. Every settler can have his well and his 
wind-mill, with not only a full supply for domestic luxury, but for all the requirements of 
garden, orchard and paddock. The area capable of irrigation is large, and the agri 
culture of the future will have wide scope in providing provender for the pastoral 
stations on either side. Nor does the future prosperity of the town depend on 
agriculture and pastoral work alone. Coal crops up in the neighbourhood, and on the 
Baltimore Mountain one seam nearly six feet in thickness has been opened out. The 
country to the north-west is known to be rich in copper ore, and it is reasonable to 
look forward to the establishment of a large smelting industry. At present, however, 
Dubbo is little more than a pleasant village, with comfortable cottage-homes and the usual 
commercial and public buildings. The district is healthful and the children thrive, though not 
with .such promise in their limbs, or roses in their faces, as are seen on the table-lands. 

As the traveller follows the line of the railway more to the north-west, he notes 
that the a.spect of the country gradually changes. The trees fall back, the plains 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



26 = 



expand, native-oak belts enclose great flats, where in a good season tall wild-oats hide 
the sheep ; the salt-bush becomes frequent, and soon large clumps of lemon-tinted 
narran are seen, with sandal-wood and emu-bush, and then a flat all luyatls and salt- 
bush. On this broad plain the beautiful viyall is not only characteristic, but supreme. 
It spreads from the railway-fence to the dark-green belt on the horizon, willow-like in 
its pendant boughs, with dark trunk and olive-silvery foliage ; and, if but a bough be 
broken, exuding an odour as sweet as that of violets or new-mown hay. Of all the 
native-growths the myall is the fittest to droop over a grave ; to be the in niemoriam 
tree of Australia, sacred as the • yew in England and the cypress in Italy. 




1 



Ws 



A camel-t?:am at wilcannia. 



The railway line follows the ridge of the water-shed between the Bogan and the 
Macquarie Rivers. The first township of any importance is Nyngan, where the rail- 
road crosses the Bogan, and from which a line is projected to the west to the 
mining township of Cobar. From Nyngan the railway runs over a poor, patchy pastoral 
country, passing Girilambone, where there are large outcrops of copper ore, which, 
however, have not yet led to the discovery of profitable mines ; past Coolabah — the 
native name for a full-foliaged handsome description of eucalyptus — and on to Bourke, 
whicli is at present the terminus of the North-Western Railway. To get a comprehensive 
understanding of this north-western district, it will be well to follow the line from 
Nyngan to Cobar. For the whole seventy miles there is hardly a sign of an agricultural 
or a pastoral homestead. The soil is a light red sand, and patches of scrub are frequent. 
There is little to be seen but wire fences, and sheep clustered about the dams, or 
camped in the shade of the trees. 

Cobar, a mining township seventy miles from Nyngan, looks an anomaly among the 
great pasturages — a municipality with mayor and aldermen, court house, banks, churches 
and schools, out in the midst of the sheep and cattle, the kangaroos and emus, and 
the wild scrub-country. The germ from which the isolated township grew was an 



266 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

outcrop of copper ore — a singular deposit, contained chiefly in a conical hill, on a 
poorly-jjrassed, lightly-timbered plain. In the hill-side is a spring, and stock-men and 
shepherds were often puzzled by the bright green deposit about the rocks, and the 
metallic taste of the water. Some practical investigators, attracted by the bush-men's 
yarns, set themselves to trace out the cause of this green deposit, and very soon came 
on magnificent lodes of various descriptions of copper ore. A company was formed to 
work the property, and a township grew with great rapidity. Cornish and Welsh miners 
were brought up the Darling from Adelaide, furnaces were built, shafts sunk, adits 
driven, and copper to the value of upwards of a million sterling has already been 
raised. The primitive buildings were mostly of slabs, pine-logs, or pist< work, but many 
of them have already been replaced by substantial brick structures. A fall in the price 
of the metal and the difificulty of obtaining fuel for roasting ores and smelting have 
given a check to the progress of the place. Firewood has to be brought in by a tram- 
line, fifteen miles in length, the bush for some distance round having been cleared of 
timber. The hope of this copper district — for the indications of copper ore are widely 
spread — lies in railway communication with the coal-fields in the neighbourhood of Dubbo. 

Beyond Cobar, to the west, and running through much scrub-land, is the road to 
Wilcannia, the river-port of the central Darling, of the Paroo, of the Barcoo, and the 
Diamantina country of Queensland, of the gold and silver country in the burnt bleak 
Barrier Ranges, and of a great area of rich pastoral land bordering on and adjacent to 
the River. Wilcannia has grown up since 1868, being the best crossing-place for stock 
travelling from the north-western pastures to the Melbourne and Sydney markets. From 
being a mere fording township it grew to more importance as the starting-point to the 
gold-fields of Mount Brown and the silver-country to the south-west. Excellent stone 
has been found in quarries in the neighbouring hill, and good and substantial buildings 
indicate that the old ford is to be a permanent township. A varied and peculiar traffic 
is found in Wilcannia. Horse and bullock teams trend through the streets and camp on 
the common every day. The river-steamers, constructed for shallow-water navigation, pass 
up the stream laden with stores, and down tjie stream with bales of wool. But novel 
to Australian bush-men are the camel-teams, which were introduced in order to make the 
journey to the mining districts when two or three days' stages had to be travelled 
without water. From four to eight pairs of these quaint creatures are harnessed to an 
ordinary horse-waggon, and encouraged by their Arab or Afghan driver, toil with many 
a grunt and groan over their weary and arduous journey. Two hundred miles lie 
between Wilcannia and the townships of the gold and silver fields — a dreary distance 
unrelieved by any pleasant break. 

But travelling up and down this River when the water is in flood is by no means 
dreadful. The boats used in the trade are fairly comfortable, with sleeping-cabins placed 
on a hurricane-deck. Towing one or two barges astern, they fight their way manfully 
up stream, cutting out in times of high-flood to ana-branches or side-currents, steaming 
away over tree-tops, and not unfrequently getting hung up or snagged on submerged 
obstacles. They travel by day and by night, some old river-pilots preferring the darkest 
night, as the three or four powerful lights invariably carried show ahead a broad illu- 
mmated path, along which it is tolerably easy to steer. But the up-river journey is 




I 



THE WINDINGS OF THE MURRAY AT ALBURY. 



i 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 267 

always tedious ; nor is there much charm of scenery to break the monotony. The frinji^e 
of eucalyptus is ahiiost continuous, and on the banks beyond spread out the plains — in 
a good season green with innumerable herbs and luxuriant grass, and in time of drought 
covered with brown, gray, or red dust, and dotted with bleaching bones. Some distance 
north of Wilcannia is the little settlement of Louth — a purely pastoral village, deriving 
all its importance from the stock-traffic, and the enterprise of the few inhabitants who 
have shown what the soil is capable of when treated to a little judicious irrigation. 

North of Louth is Bourke, the one historic and characteristic township of the great 
inland River. Bourke has an Australian name and fame. It is to the pastoral life what 
Ballarat is to the mining. The typical drover, squatter, shepherd, stock-man, is as 
thoroughly identified with the one as the old-time digger with the other, and though in 
these times a commonplace conventionalism tends to make men more and more alike, 
the men who pass through Bourke up and down, or who linger there for a holiday, 
despite the superior charms of the coastal towns, so easily accessible by railway, have 
many characteristics and peculiarities of their own. The town is built on a black flat 
on the left or southern bank of the River — a dead level that stretches away to the 
horizon, with a few poor clumps of trees to diversify its bleak and shapeless aspect. 
Thirty miles north-east is the remarkable Mount Oxley, rising to the height of seven 
hundred feet sheer from the plain, its treeless ridge straight as a roof-line. Red 
soil is found on the skirts of the black plain, marking the limit of past overflows, for 
the River now very rarely rises to the streets of the town. Salt and cotton bush, and 
many varieties of river-bank herbage — cresses, spinifex, luarrigal cabbage, Darling peas and 
native tobacco — grow freely over all the flat, and intrude themselves as familiar weeds 
in the gardens and streets and the enclosures of the railway. All the great buildings 
— churches, hospitals, schools, banks and principal hotels — are of brick ; the more humble 
establishments and the cottages are of galvanized iron, sawn pine, or the various materials 
ingeniously applied to back-block architecture. The streets are broad, but unmetalled. In 
a dry hot day of midsummer black dust as fine as flour blows along them. In a 
wet day of winter the sticky mud clings to all things with which it comes in contact 
- — boot-soles, buggy-wheels, the hoofs of horses. The traveller finds himself in a few 
minutes walking in clogs, so quickly does the plastic mass grow beneath him. The 
experienced resident keeps within doors, holding fast to the common creed that there 
was never yet so much hurry in Bourke that a man need go outside when it rained. 
About once in a quarter of a century there is a flood, when the waters are four feet 
deep in all the lower parts of the town. This, however, is not due to the local rain- 
fall, but to the swollen streams that roll down from the western slopes of the Queens- 
land main ranw and converc^e above the town. 

There are not many wet days in Bourke. Winter months bring occasionally 
piercing winds, the thermometer standing at fifty degrees. Summer is unmistakably hot ; 
the mercury, even in the shade, often ranging from a hundred and ten to a hundred 
and twenty-five degrees. It is not the place in which a man favoured with a choice 
would choose for a residence, and yet the regular inhabitants, with the frequent visitors, 
seem to live with tolerable comfort and health, though in a way of their own. From 
the balcony of either of the large hotels b)' the River, where most of the life of the 



268 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



town focalizes or passes by, much that is interesting and peculiar may be seen. The 
larger hotels, after the old colonial style, are divided into two parts— this the squatter's 
side, that the bush-man's. There are of course characters of all sorts, and some are 
steady and sober; but too many of the bush-men, stock-men, shearers, boundary-riders, 




STREET, BUURKE. 

drovers, steam-boat men, all drink together, 
get drunk, lie upon the benches, get sober, 
go down to the River for a swim, "get 
broke" — or, in more intelligible phrase, spend 
all their earnings — and clear out for work 
again. The squatters lounge about the other 
side. These master pastoralists are of two 
kinds — old fellows inured to bush-life and 
lost to all desire of the city, and young 
fellows only a year from the coast ; but all 
of them having the fine copper)- hue which a 
year of the Darling sun puts on. The busi- 
ness of the day seems to be to lounge, to drink at intervals, to yarn continuously, to 
speculate on the prospects of the season, and without ceasing, though in their own 
fashion, to pray for rain. The towns-folk go about their business leisurely enough. 



THE TRANSIT OF WOOL ON THE DARLING. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 269 

Bankers, public officials and others keep for awhile a metropolitan style, hut not beyond a 
single summer ; the languor of the hot North changes their manners before they them- 
selves change the cut of their clothes. The two great businesses in Bourke are the 
carrying of goods and the purveying of drinks. Every second shop seems to dispense 
liquors, and happily, since the completion of the railway, many varieties of drinks are 
brewed from the lemons and oranges and ice brought up by the daily train from the 
coast. Bullock-teams, horse-teams and American coaches come into the town from all 
points of the compass, and in the busy season the streets are lively with shearers with 
pack-horses, and swag-men with all their estate on their backs, steam-boat hands, and 
drovers from the Warrego, the Paroo, and the Bulloo. 

The shearers may have left their mountain homes at Monaro in midwinter, may 
travel a couple of thousand miles, do good work, and then reach home again by harvest. 
The swag-man may have walked the length and breadth of the colonies ; but the river- 
men live, and hope to die, on the water. The drovers aie the busiest and perhaps the 
most interesting of all — wild fellows who live at least sixteen hours out of the twenty- 
four in the saddle, who bring down the big "mobs" of cattle from the rich pasturages of 
Western Queensland, truck them at the yards a couple of miles out of the town, enjoy 
in their own way their loose day or two, and then make back again. Strange expe^'ience 
this for the cattle — creatures as wild as bufi^aloes, who on their native pastures would 
bolt from a man who should venture near them unmounted ; yet not less than fifty 
thousand are trucked every year, long trains with the living freight starting city-wards 
every day. In the near future this live-stock traffic may end, and a great slaughtering 
and freezing establishment may be at work on the edge of the great pastures. If this 
anticipated change takes place, Bourke may develope somewhat on the lines of Chicago. 

Nor is it necessary that the produce of the district should be confined to wool and 
meat only. A glance at the Chinese garden, irrigated by an engine and a Tangye pump 
lifting water' from two wells, shows that the soil will grow anything — peaches, grapes, 
oranges, oats, cotton, tobacco, maize, and all sorts of vegetables. Three miles east of 
Bourke the River is bridged, and from, the bridge the roads branch off to the border, 
and over ten degrees of longitude to the great downs of Queensland and the Northern 
Territory of .South Australia. 

To the north lies the country of the springs, a remarkable tract running between 
the Warrego and the Paroo, where the water breaks right through to the surface — 
sometimes through a stratum of pipe-clay, bearing up so much of that easily-soluble 
substance as to be undrinkable and valueless, at others from a stratum of unsalted drift, 
through limestone or ferruginous rock, overflowing pure, limpid, cool ; giving birth to a 
verdant grass and reed growth, and making a rare oasis on the plain. Beyond the 
springs lies a poor scrubby country, with a sparse supply of spinifex, and before the 
rich downs of Queensland are reached is Barrigun, where ultimately the great Queensland 
overland line will join that of New .South Wales. 

Brewarrina is seventy miles east of Bourke on the left bank of the Darling. It is 
somewhat similar to the latter both in architecture and design, and anticipates a like 
future. To the north, towards the Queensland border, it commands a country infinitely 
superior to the background of Bourke — at least twenty thousand square miles of rich 



.-o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

black flats, broken up by occasional sand-ridges, traversed by the four creeks which 
receive the waters of the Queensland Balonne and discharge into the Cato (a branch of 
the Darling), and the Narran Lake. There are great possibilities in this country, but as 
yet enterprise has been only primitively pastoral. The waters run to waste in floods, the 
plains bake and burn in times of drought; a few tanks indeed have been excavated, a few 
dams made on the creeks, but nothing adequately to meet the terrible exigencies of a climate 
whose fat and lean years come almost as regularly as those foretold by Joseph in Eg)pt. 
The aspect of this great country is not wanting in the picturesque ; the mirage is 
frequently seen in perfection — trees inverted in phantom lakes, sheep in the distance 
looming like advancing armies, swag-men taking on gigantic proportions, and seeming at 
times to rise suddenly from the earth. Here also is seen that peculiar phenomenon of 
the lifting or expanding horizon at sunrise and even. In the heat of day all around 
seems bare, bald, plain ; the range of vision being limited by the refraction of heated 
air, but just at dawn or evening the traveller, familiar only with the daylight aspect, is 
astonished to see long lines of black timber by various lagoons and creeks, the serrated 
crest of a pine-ridge, with the dark and tangled woods below, horses and bullocks an 
hour's ride away, and emus and kangaroos making down to the water. All are swallowed 
up, and with almost equal rapidity, in increasing light and darkness. Many varieties of 
timber-trees also are found here quite foreign to dwellers on the high lands of the 
coast. The ghostly brigalow grows in thorny clumps on the poorest ground, the gidya 
bears a broad and shady crown with bunches of pale yellow blossoms malodorous in the 
extreme ; the leopard-tree lifts its quaint spotted trunk, and here is found the beef-wood, 
which shows on its cleavage a grain strongly resembling that of a broad-cut steak ; 
niulga, myall and yarran are abundant, and as undergrowth there are all kinds of salt 
and cotton bush, and an infinite variety of succulent herbs. 

Farther up the River is Walgett, the permanent head of tlie Darling navigation ; and 
from Walgett there is a good coach-road to Coonamble and thence to Dubbo. Walgett 
is an important town, and most favourably situated with respect to general convenience 
of trade. It is accessible from the northern as well as from the western lines, and does 
also a very considerable business with the country beyond the River. Both its rivers are 
bridged, and an effort has been made to make both navigable, but the snags in the 
Namoi proved too formidable even when covered by the highest flood. 

Coonamble, a hundred miles down the Castlereagh, and almost due south ot 
Walgett. touches again on the agricultural country. The future of the town depends on 
the development of the agricultural resources, which are scarcely inferior to those of 
Dubbo. Indeed the soil here, east, west, north and south, is adapted to tillage ; but 
the alternating years of terrible floods and disastrous droughts are disheartening to any 
but well sustained and strongly supported effort. 

A hundred and ten miles of coaching, through as fair a pastoral country as any 
squatting prospector could desire, brings the traveller from Coonamble back to Dubbo. 
Creeks and rivers are frequent throughout the journey — all that net-work of streams from 
the Namoi to the Bogan which water some of the finest stations the colony knows — a 
glorious country in a rainy spring, a terrible scene of desolation in a dry summer. 
Agriculture attacks its .southern skirts, and supports such little townships as Warren and 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 271 

Cannonbar ; but all its northern breadth is given over to sheep, and probably will be 
held exclusively for sheep through many future years. But it may be so developed and 
improved by water conservation and irrigation, by the reservation and storage of the 
extra-growth of good years, as to be habitable and tolerable, and ultimately profitable, 
through any succession of seasons or of cycles. 

Generally speaking the western and north-western portion of New South Wales 
constitutes a district distinctly marked out by Nature as having its own special character. 
Hitherto it has been purely pastoral, except so far as it has been interfered with by 
mining adventurers. In a state of nature the country is not very occupiable any distance 
back from the Darling. When first taken up by speculative pastoralists the land was only 
•available for grazing purposes for half the year, and not even that unless there had been 
an average rain-fall. But by dint of much labour in increasing the water-supply many 
large districts have been made pasturable all the year round. For increasing this water- 
supply two methods have been adopted. The first has been to gather the surface-water, 
and this has been done by selecting natural hollows, deepening them and running plough- 
furrows towards them. In this way the surplus rain-fall is collected into large earthen 
tanks. The soil excavated makes a high bank around, and this breaks the play of the 
wind over the water and diminishes the evaporation. Many tanks of this kind, however, 
have been prepared for over three years before enough rain fell to fill them. 

The other method of storing water is by sinking wells. The subterranean supply 
has these two advantages : it is cooler, and it is not exposed to evaporation. Generally, 
however, it has to be pumped to the surface, and the wells are costly to make and costly 
to maintain. Scores have been sunk without tapping water at all, and in. many other 
cases the water has been too salt for use. But the enterprise of the squatter is often 
rewarded by a well which never fails even in the driest season ; in fact, the well is quite 
independent of the local rain-fall, for the water pumped up in the basin of the Darling 
has fallen first upon the western plains of Queensland, and having soaked in there is 
pursuing its under-ground course to the sea. 

The natural fodder of the "Great West" consists of grass and the various salsolaceous 
plants. The former, however, exists only a short time after rain, the intense . heat soon 
turning the green herbage into something resembling live hay, after which it dries up 
into chips and powder and is blown away by the wind, leaving the ground as bare as 
a road. Yet with all these drawbacks the country has been not unprofitably occupied, 
for it is remarkably healthy for both sheep and cattle ; the squatters, who in the main 
have been a highly enterprising class, have already done much to protect themselves 
against the irregularities of the climate, and every year they are learning more and more 
the art of turning the great western country to account. Forbidding as the land looks 
to a stranger in the bad season, this vast district is a very valuable province of New 
South Wales, and comprises within its area several of the richest mines and many broad 
tracts of the finest pasturage in the country. 

For the sake of convenience in dealing with the public lands the colony is divided 
into three territorial divisions, and these again into ninety-five land districts, under the 
administration of sixteen land boards. The Eastern Division extends from the Dumaresq 
to the head-waters of the Murray, and comprises the nine land board areas of Albury, 



,-, . AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Cooma. Goulburn. Sydney, Orange, Maitland, portion of Tamworth, Glen Innes and 
Grafton ; and the land districts of Eden, Bombala, Bega, Cooma, Moruya, Albury, 
Tiimut. Queanbeyan. Braidwood, Milton, Nowra, Goulburn, Yass, Gundagai, Cootamundra, 
Young, Boorowa, Gunning, Berrima, Kiama, Wollongong. Campbelltown, Camden, Liver- 
pool. Lithgow, Carcoar, Cowra, Molong, Wellington, Orange, Bathurst, Penrith, Parra- 
matta, the Metropolitan, Gosford, Windsor, Rylstone, Mudgee, Wollombi, Newcastle, 
Raymond Terrace, Maitland, Singleton, Muswellbrook, Cassilis, Scone, Paterson, Dungog, 
Stroud, Taree, Port Macquarie, Murrurundi, Tamworth, Walcha, Kempsey, Armidale, 
Inverell. Glen Innes, Grafton, Lismore, Murwillumbah, Casino and Tenterfield — in all 
sixty-three land districts. The Central Division flanks the Eastern Division on its 
western ed^-e. runs parallel to the coast, and bisects the colony in a broad belt and in 
a dia«'onal direction. It comprises the five land board areas of Wagga Wagga, Foirbes, 
Dubbo. portion of Tamworth, and Moree ; and the twenty-three land districts of Corowa, 
Deniliquin. Urana, Wagga Wagga, Narrandera, Hay, Balranald South, Hillston, Grcnfell, 
Forbes, Condobolin, Parkes, Dubbo, Cobar East, Brewarrina Elast, Coonamble, Coona- 
barabran, Gunnedah, Narrabri, Walgett, Bingera, Warialda and Moree. The Western 
Division extends from the River Barwon and the River Lachlan, and a surveyed line 
drawn between them, to the one hundred and forty-first meridian of east longitude and 
the twenty-ninth degree of south latitude. It occupies the whole of the western corner 
of the colony, and comprises the three land board areas of Hay, Bourke and Wilcannia ; 
and the nine land districts of Wentworth, Balranald, Hay North, Hillston North, Wil- 
cannia, Cobar, Bourke, Brewarrina and Walgett North. 

The Southern District. 

From Sydney to Parramatta Junction — now called Granville — the railway line is 
common to both the West and the South. The junction township is becoming a place of 
importance, and already growing dusky with the smoke-stains of brick-kilns and chimney- 
stacks, the soil being well suited for the manufacture of drain-pipes and bricks. At this 
point the Southern Railway branches off, and roughly following the coast-line, though 
gradually diverging from it, traverses broad pasture-paddocks, with here and there a 
vineyard and a waving corn-field. For a few miles from Granville huge piles of fire-wood 
ready for transport flank the railroad, and indicate the locality whence Sydney receives 
a portion of its fuel. This district is not yet suburban, but the subdivisions into building 
allotments of estate after estate forecast its future. 

Twenty-two miles from Sydney stands the early settlement of Liverpool, so called in 
honour of the well-known English statesman of that name, and with an assumption of a 
prophetic character touching its future development ; it being a fond illusion of its 
founders that the colonial Liverpool would one day stand in the same relation to Sydney 
that the English city of the same name stood to the metropolis of Great Britain — like 
many other dearly cherished hopes this has long been dead. It is characteristic of 
colonial development that the forecasts even of practical men should prove wrong, places 
of which great expectations are entertained remaining provokingly unprogressive, while 
despised townships shoot ahead with unexpected vigour. Prosperity cannot be grafted 
on barren stock ; commerce takes its own path, and declines to be dictated to. 



'J'HJi TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



!73 



y\rountl this lirst collection of huts a town gradually grew up ; it long resisted 
modernizing inlluences, but is now a thriving place, the chief industries being poultry- 
rearing, dairy-farming, wool-washing and fellmongering. The Collingwood Paper Mill, 
established some years back at a large outlay, and built upon the left bank of the 
George's River, is now the best of its kind in Australia, employing a number of hands 




;^i«*. -■■' 



THE COLLINGWOOD PAPER MILL, LIVERPOOL. 

and turning out paper of an excellent quality. The River, whose banks are the site of 
most of the industries of the place, is navigable for vessels of moderate draught as far as 
the town, where in the early days a dam was constructed to bank back the fresh water. 
One of the more famous institutions of Liverpool is Moore College, situated but a 
short distance from the town, a seminary endowed by private munificence for the purpose 
of teaching youths intended for the ministry of the Anglican Church. It has been 



274 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



determined, however, by the Church authorities to remove this college to Sydney so as 
to be near the University. The principal public institution of the place is a benevolent 
asylum for old men. This charity has its head-quarters in a rambling old building on 
the west bank of George's River, with a quadrangle in which sleep, sheltered h)' a 
meagre awning of canvas, the tough veterans accustomed to exposure in the bush. The 
inmates of the asylum number eight hundred. Many of these, years ago, were strong 
and stalwart busl\-men — active on the shearing-floor, intrepid in the stock-yard and the 
cattle-camp ; and some have trod the unknown and sterile desert with early exploring 
parties. Hut wages went as freely as they came, and age crept on without any provision. 
Many of them, though old, are remarkably hale, notwithstanding a rough and hard 
experience ; they afford a proof of the healthiness of a country life, passed in the open 
air, beneath the blue sky and the fervid sun of Australia. These old fellows no longer 
take an interest in the affairs that occup)- the remainder of the world. They are resting 
here before passing the final stage. Captious are they on some points. W'hen, a few 
years ago, a damp corner of the cemetery was set apart for paupers, the old men arose 
and carried their grievance to the Rev. Mr. Walker, at that time incumbent of the 
old church of St. Luke's. The reverend gentleman at first argued that it made slight 
difference to the immortal soul where the spiritless body might be laid, but being unsuc- 
cessful in convincing his hearers, he concluded his remonstrance with a promise that his 

body should rest with 
their own. The pro- 
mise was kept, and the 
clergyman's tomb is in 
the damp corner. 

The Anglican 
church of St. Luke's 
was erected by convict 
labour in the year 
i8ig. When, several 
years ago, its interior 
Sittings were removed, 
there was found, under 
the ffoor of the gallery 
formerly occupied by 
the convict portion of 
the congregation, a 
number of old Spanish 
dollars. This discovery 
was taken as evidence 
that during the services a little gambling was done. Besides St. Luke's, a note- 
worthy piece of prisoners' handiwork is the massive stone bridge over Prospect Creek, 
consisting of a single arch, the span of which is one hundred and twenty feet. The 
design is placed to the credit of David Lennox, and the foundation stone was laid 
over fifty years ago. A monument to Captain Cook ornaments the recreation reserve. 




Sr. JOHN S CHURCH, CAMPBELLTOWN. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



275 





Ilia 



Above Liverpool the River becomes shallow, and on the left or eastward side, is a 
wide tract of country consisting of poor light soil, though on the right are pleasing 
undulating slopes, and some pretty glimpses of agricultural settlement. Less than twelve 
miles from Liverpool there is a rise of one hundred and sixty feet to Campbelltown, a 
healthy old road-side township, two hundred and ten feet above sea-level. Here, placed 
on the highest hill, is the Roman Catholic chapel of 
St. John's, consecrated by Arch-priest Therry over half 
a century since. In the adjoining grave-yard is a stone 
which informs the curious that beneath it lie the 
mortal remains of one James Ruse, native of Cornwall, 
who came to the colony with the I'irst Meet, and 
who sowed the first wheat grown in New South Wales. 

Fifty-six years ago Campbelltown was the centre 
of a large wheat-growing district, but about the year 
i860 the rust made its appearance, and gradually 
overcame the farmers. Ploughs were laid by and 
flour-mills ceased grinding corn, and the land was 
mainly used for growing hay and grazing stock. But 
as time passed on the population increased ; many 
settlers finding attractions on this part of the Southern 
Line, the old farms changed hands, and considerable 
sums were spent on improvements. P>om this point 
on the railroad branches off a light line to Camden, a 
small town about ten miles to the westward, and the 
nucleus of early agricultural settlement. It has been 
described at length, in connection with the introduction 

of wool, in a previous chapter. Here also is agriculture harassed by plant-diseases, and 
damages done by vegetable parasites. Many years ago rust attacked the wheat-fields ; there 
is now phylloxera in the vineyards. An additional trouble is found in the irregularity of the 
climate ; for several seasons the rain-fall has been provokingly scanty. Yet, notwithstanding 
these various drawbacks, Camden is a contented little spot, with few wants and fair prospects, 
and its annual agricultural exhibitions rank well among the best rural displays of the South. 

The old road, which was laid out by Sir Thomas Mitchell, followed the ridge lying 
between the Nepean River and the George's River, and then, crossing the spurs running 
down inland from the coast range, descended into the deep intervening gullies from 
which the water-supply of Sydney is now obtained. A later and easier road took a 
course which in the main is followed by the railway line. This route passes through the 
town of Menangle, where it crosses the River, six miles from Campbelltown, on a bridge 
nearly five hundred feet in length, built on the box-girder principle. In ordinary seasons 
its four huge supports tower giant-like over the stream, but instances are not rare when 
they have had their solidity well tested by torrents which have risen to within a few 
feet of the roadway. 

Douglas Park is some miles farther on, and to the eastward appears the massive 
stone residence known as the Nepean Towers, a mansion originally erected by Sir 



CKpAKIL-Q THIS LIFE 5#^i,., 
*S.EPV i" IWTBETEABfoP™ 
HOUSE LOHD 1857 i^AI^^F '^ 

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FoKSTTHET AGED 77 

MV MOTHER REREAD HtltoDEMY 1 
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SiOWD THEEORSX GRAIN ffiTONoW 
.uTft s^- lte\feJ}I:^i■ fATHIRlHoPE 
l'Ci>^..lcaSlB:JO "REMAIN 




RUSES TOMBSTONE. 



,76 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Thomas Mitchell, then Surveyor-General. The soil here, although of poor quality. 
pastured not long ago a valuable herd of pure-bred short-horns, some of which were 
from the best stock of Great Britain. To the left of the line is Mount Gilead, upon 
the apex of which stands as a prominent landmark a large and well-preserved building 
of a circular form— the remains of an old wind-mill. Winding around the foot of the 
Mount is the wide conduit through which slowly flows to the metropolis the pure clear 
water of fresh mountain-streams. 

Picton. fifty-three miles from Sydney, the next important stopping-place, though lying 
in the valley of the River, enjoys an elevation of over five hundred feet, which makes 
it a favourite health-resort. Its reputation as a sanatorium is so considerable that it 
has been chosen as a favourite locality for a hospital for consumptives, established and 
endowed by private benevolence. At Picton the railway begins the ascent to the table- 
land, the gradient on leaving the station being one in thirty-three ; within a distance of 
si.x miles there is a rise of over five hundred feet, at which point the engines stay 
their course to replenish their tanks. This is done from a chain of lagoons known as 
the Picton Lakes, lying on the right in the broadened bed of a sandstone gully — 
rough and uninviting country, densely timbered and but little used. A few miles to the 
east is the darkly-famed Bargo Brush — a primitive forest, through which ran the Southern 
Road, and which, in days of old, gave shelter and concealment to man\- bold and 
blood-thirsty bushrangers, whose dark and sanguinary deeds have inscribed the name of 
Bargo on the crimson calendar of crime, for in outlaw lore it stands even before 
Eugowra and Glenrowan. 

Fifteen miles of climbing through long, deep, expensive cuttings follows, the engines 
labouring upward through the narrow sandstone cleft, and within the distance making an 
ascent qf nine hundred feet. On the hill-top begins the southern line of summer retreats, 
though the first of importance is Mittagong, w^hich stands at an elevation of over two 
thousand feet above sea-level. Here the horse-road and railway routes reunite. Mitta- 
gong long remained a terminus, as a tunnel of nearly six hundred yards in length had 
to be bored before the railroad could proceed on its journey farther south. Considerable 
deposits of very fine hematite iron ore, with promising seams of coal near at hand, 
lie close to the town, and large sums have been spent in fruitless endeavours to develope 
these treasures. But the lack of technical knowledge, as has been the case in regard to 
so many colonial industries, swamped the capital at the outset. The coal was found to 
be ill-adapted for smelting, and lime had to be brought from a considerable distance ; 
all this militated against the economical treatment of the ores. The minerals, however, 
still remain, and may in years to come be profitably worked. Fifteen miles distant, at 
Joadja Creek, a seam of kerosene-shale, estimated to contain one million and a half tons, 
is being attacked by two companies, both thriving, and employing large nimibers of 
workmen. A private narrow-gauge railway has been constructed by one of the companies 
from the station down into the deep gorge where the mineral is worked. 

Berrima, four miles from the trunk line, and situated on the Main Southern Road, 
is the centre of a district rich in minerals. Here, at an elevation of two thousand 
three hundred feet above the level of the .sea, stands a gaol, conducted on what is 
known as the "silent system"; prisoners who receive long sentences have to serve at 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



277 



Berrima one month for every year of their term, and the name has a terrifying effect 
on evil-doers. Four miles from the town a seam of coal is being successfully worked. 
Just beyond Mittagong the railway passes by a tunnel under the Gibraltar Ridge 
and comes out on Howral, which in the hot 
weather is a popular resort for the tired and 
jaded workers from the city, the plateau on the 
Southern Line Ijeing the rival of the Blue Moun- 
tains as a summer retreat. The latter have 



these advantages 



— that a given 
elevation is ob- 
tainable within a 
shorter distance 
from the metro- 
polis, that the rail- 
way ascends a 
thousand feet 
higher, and that 
they are freer 
from the salt sea- 
breezes ; on the 
other hand, the 
land traversed by 
the southern 
route is more 
open and fertile, 
provisions are ob- 
tained with less 
difficult}', and 






there are greater opportuni- 
ties for extended excursions. 
Wide tracts of rich volcanic 
soil abound, and the 
scenery, although neither 
grand nor imposing, is 
varied and beautiful. The 
atmosphere is dry and ex- 
hilarating, and the fresh 
breeze blows over open ver- 
dant leas and undulating 
slopes which remind the 
traveller of many an En- 
glish county. Around Bow- 
ral and Moss Vale are a 
number of interesting 
drives, a journey of about 
two hours, proceeding in 
an easterly direction, bring- 
ing the tourist to the first 
cataract of the Fitzroy 
Falls. Here, in rainy sea- 
sons, a large volume of 
water flows over a blufT at 
the head of a gorge which is half a mile in width, one thousand feet in depth, and many 
miles in length — in general outline somewhat similar to those famed and picturesque chasms 



THE FITZKOY FALLS, MOSS VALE. 



!78 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



that constitute the characteristic scenerj' of the Blue Mountains. High rocks and preci- 
pices, scarred by the rains of ages, line the gorge on either side, while the steep-wooded 
slopes descend to the bed of a silver)' stream, which has sprung over a perpendicular 
precipice four hundred feet in depth, scattering into the air a mist of golden spray. 
There are three principal falls and several minor ones, all. of which are easily accessible. 
The locality is a favourite resort, and a shelter-shed is provided for picnic-parties. The 
Falls are a public reserve, and under the charge of a care-taker. 

Burrawang and Robertson, two picturesque settlements situated on the margin of a 
rich flat, formerly the bed of an ancient lake, are also attractive to tourists, being 
within easy driving-distance of Moss Vale. Twenty years ago the country around was 
known as the Big Scrub. It proved expensive land to clear, but it well repaid the 
outlay, being the best dairying country on the Southern Line. 

In the spring and summer, when the enervating " north-easters " leave smoke-dried 
city-dwellers limp and gasping, all who can afford the luxury fly to the inland heights. 
Bowral and Moss \'ale, both highly prosperous towns, share between them the profits 
of this great health-dispensing business. A few miles from Moss Vale is Sutton Forest, 
also a favourite retreat, once honoured with vice-regal patronage, Lord Carrington's summer 
residence being within its boundaries. Apart, however, from these considerations there 
remain with this fortunate portion of the South the substantial benefits which good soil 

and a favourable climate 
afford. It is a suitable 
district for dairy-farm- 
ing, and contributes 
largely to the milk-sup- 
ply of the capital. 
Every acre of land is 
now put to a good use, 
and large sums are 
being expended in ob- 
taining the best breeds 
of dairy -stock. There 
is an increase in the 
work of cultivation, and 
the old residents are 
being incited to emulate 
the activity and zeal of 
the new-comers, hence farming has become fashionable, while at the same time it gives 
cheering promise of being profitable. At one of the highest points of the Main Southern 
Line, about ninety miles from Sydney, 'is kept a herd of Ayrshires, the milk being daily 
forwarded to Sydney. It is cooled on the farm by being gradually poured over surfaces 
beneath which cold water is kept running. When the weather is very warm ice is used 
in the railway-cars in which are placed the cans, and there are stores artificially refrigerated 
at the metropolitan end. By this system, originated by the late Mr. Thomas Sutcliffe 
Mort, Sydney is now most successfully supplied with pure country milk. 




I 



THE RESIDE.NCE OF LORD CAKRINGTON AT SUTTON FOREST. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



279 



\ 



II*' 






'A 
ai 

D 
O 

-J 









Hitherto the course of the railway has been roughly parallel with the coast, but 
from the ninety-mile post a turn is taken to the westward, a direction which is hence- 
forward followed for a distance of nearly two hundred miles. Between Moss Vale and 



28o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Goulburn is a stretch of country, nearly fifty miles in extent, suited to a mixed system 
of farming. Both climate and soil favour the production of fruit, but there are few 
orchards, the settlers, though equally strangers to opulence or to poverty, lacking that 
energy necessary to develope the varied resources of so rich a district. At Marulan, a 
small town near the railway line, are quarries of marble and lime, large quantities of 
which are sent to the metropolis. 

.\ glance at the map of New South Wales at once discloses the reason why Goul- 
burn became first a favourite camp, next a permanent settlement, and then gradually 
put on the garb and aspect of a city. A chain of ponds, known as the Mulwarrec, 
joined to the Wollondilly River, afforded an ample water-supply for pastoral purposes, and 
the surrounding country being materially aided by Lakes George and Bathurst, many of the 
pioneer squatters secured large freehold estates in the neighbourhood. Even in the early 
days of its existence, Goulburn was remarkable for the variety and extent of its industries. 
It was admirably laid out in wide streets, the blocks for occupation being in every case 
rectangular ; large stores were erected, flour-mills were set to work, and tradesmen began 
small businesses which have since developed into large and important local manufactories. 
The settlers on the soil zealously supported the efforts of the townsmen; large 
areas were placed under crop ; orchards were formed, and tanneries, fellmongering works 
and boot factories were started. About a quarter of a century ago the town became a 
city. Episcopalians and Roman Catholics having chosen it as a favourite centre for their 
dioceses. The Church of England Cathedral is a beautiful building of a chaste Gothic 
design, and the interior fittings are in thorough keeping with the sacred character of 
the edifice. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is a commodious, handsome structure, while 
Presbyterians, Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists have also liberally contributed to the 
architectural treasures of the city. Hut the principal buildings in Goulburn are the Post 
and Telegraph Offices, which are surmounted by a high tower ; a model gaol, not long- 
since completed ; the railway buildings ; and the well-built and only recently finished Court 
House and other public offices. The local Agricultural -Society, a vigorous institution, has 
a show-ground which is considered a model for enclosures of the kind. The city is 
surrounded by valuable estates, upon which stock-breeding is conducted on scientific prin- 
ciples, and horses and cattle bred in the district have established an enviable reputa- 
tion ; but it is with merino sheep that its greatest triumphs have been achieved. At the 
annual intercolonial stud-sheep fairs held in the metropolis, the sheep from the 
southern city frequently top the market. A branch line of railway, which passes through 
some excellent agricultural country, has been constructed from Goulburn to Cooma, the 
central town of the great pastoral plains of Monaro. 

Lake George, situated twenty-five miles south-west of Goulburn, and guarded by 
spurs of the Great Dividing Range, is the largest lake in the colony, being twenty-five 
miles in length and eight miles in breadth. The evaporation from this vast sheet of water 
is very great, and thirty-five years ago its bed was perfectly dry. It is now, however, well 
filled, and although the water is slightly saline, it is a great boon to the occupiers of 
the land in its neighbourhood. 

Before proceeding farther inland along the line of the Great Southern Railway it 
will be convenient to take a glance at the South Coast District — the harbours and bays of 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



281 



which were described in a former chapter — and to return to Goulburn by the coach-route. 
Illawarra, the rugged strip of coast-land through which the cedar-cutters of half a 
century back had to cleave their way — then a dense jungle, but now known as the 
" Garden of New South Wales " — extends from Coalcliff on the north to Broughton 

Creek on the south. 
Its principal town is 
Wollongong, and 
there are besides the 
smaller centres, Bulli, 
Clifton, Woonoona, 
Figtree and Dapto. 
The last - mentioned 




THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL AT UOULBURN. 



village is close to the Illawarra Lake, on the shores of which is the home of William 
Beach, one of Australia's ablest oarsmen and for long the champion sculler of the world. 
There is no southern road from Sydney which keeps close to the sea, because the 
great estuaries of Botany Bay and Port Hacking prevent it. But a road was laid out 
in early days which crossed the George's River by a punt, about five miles from its 
moutli, and followed the ridge of the Bottle Forest that lies between the valley of 
Hacking Creek and the Woronora. This route fell into disuse, but it is now opened up 
again by the railway, which for a considerable distance follows the old track. The more 
usual journey by road has been from Campbelltown up to Appin, on the ridge that lies 
to the east of the Nepean, and along it till the descent to the coast is made by the 
Bulli Pass. The point at which the road emerges from the bush, and where the ocean 
bursts first upon the view, is one of the most magnificent sights near Sydney. Webber's 
Look-out —a platform fixed on the edge of the Bulli Mountain, fully a thousand feet 
above the waves which lash the rugged rocks beneath — is a spot which tourists who 
survey the scene beneath for the first time are loath to quit ; for after an eight-mile 
drive through stunted and gnarled box-forest and bittern-haunted morass, the road comes 
out suddenly, close to the crest of the coastal range, and the traveller finds himself near 



!82 



^ USTRALAS/A ILL USTRA TED. 



the gate of the BiiUi Pass. From the platform, which is on the outermost edge of a 
tall precipice, a varied and extended view is obtained of many miles of southern coast- 
line, and of rich and fertile farms as far south as Kiama. The white sand> bays 
guarded by bold headlands appear as a fringe to emerald-clad ridges and ricli grassy 
flats adown which silver-glistening streams glide onward to the sea. The jetties, run out 
for shipping coal, look like slender frame-works stretching into the ocean, and dwarfed 
by distance along them move what seem to be toy freight-trains bearing miniature loads 
to model vessels. This magnificent distant view is made more impressit^e by the sudden 
change in the forest-foliage. From a dreary Australian waste, the traveller passes almost 
with a stride into the dense and varied verdure of 
a semi-tropical jungle. Great white-trunked figs bear 
aloft their broad-leaved lustrous crowns above the 
myrtles, pittosporums and lillipillies which overhang 
the ferns and mosses of every little ravine. The 
cabbage-tree palms shoot up straight from matted 
vines and blossoming creepers, their heads waving 
plume-like against the sky. All is rich, tropical, 
odorous — a growth proper for a region nearer to the 
equator. The reason for this luxuriance, however, 
is not hard to discover. In olden days the molten 
trap-rock was forced up from below in long walls 
or dykes, and its de- 
composition spreading 
over the surface has 
furnished a rich deep 
soil. The sloping 
coastal range, too, is 
sheltered from the cut- 
ting westerly gales and 
open to the warm moist 
breezes of the sea, thus 
a climate is secured in 
which all plants of tem- 
perate and semi - tro- 
pical zones grow to 
perfection. 

Close to the BuUi 
Pass is the Bulli Coal- 
mine, where from a 

tunnel four hundred feet above sea-level is drawn an annual output of two hundred 
thousand tons of valuable coal, and north and south similar mines are at work. F"ar along 
the shore extends a range of habitations, and seven miles southward and sixty-four miles 
from Sydney lies Wollongong, with a trade, mainly seaward, equal to sixty thousand tons 
yearly. The town is built upon a gently-sloping ridge, the point of which forms the 




THE ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL AT GOULBURN. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



283 



southern side of a small harbour. Near the sea, by the side of a large lagoon, the 
Agricultural Society's Ground and the Race-course are situated, and at the back on the 
mountain ridges are hundreds of small dairy-farms. A line of railway connects Illawarra 
with the metropolis, and Wollongong now takes an active share in Sydney's milk-trade. 
Its yearly export of butter 
is about seven hundred 1^^^^^^ 

tons, though the generally T 

fortunate farmers are not 
wholly exempt from the 
droughts which afflict 
other parts of the colon\-. 
Seven miles distant, at 
the head of Lake Illawarra, 
is Dapto, with its old flour- 
mill and its handsome 
church ; and a few miles 
farther south where the 
mountains recede, thus 



leaving a greater breadth 







LAKE GEOKGli. 



of rich pasture-land, lies 
the little centre of Albion 
Park, which has its own 
small port. At this point 
the lower carboniferous 
and subcarboniferous stra- 
ta upon which Wollon- 
gong rests is overlaid by 
basalt. The peaceful vil- 
lage known as Jamberoo 
rests snugly in a valley on 
the right, and in front, 

about four-score miles from Sydney, is the coast's famed 
gem, Kiama, noted for its beauty, its butter, its blue- 
stone, and its Blow-hole. This choice spot has been 

likened to a precious emerald placed in a very rough setting, being most unlike all other 
parts of the coast, its basaltic bluffs which overhang the ocean bearing rich herbage to 
their extreme edges. The soil is wonderfully rich, and liberally supports its tillers, who for 
the greater part are independent freeholders. A block of forty acres here is worth to the 
farmer more than a square mile of ordinary country, and a railway runs almost on its 
boundary. The trade in its bluestone, immense quantities of which are required for Sydney's 
streets, has been to it a great support. Its dairy cattle are the best on the coast, 
supplying two butter factories ; indeed, it was Kiama that started the first. Coal is 
found in the district, but the seams, which crop out of the hills some miles inland, are 
at present unworked. The harbour is very small, and when easterly gales set in 



284 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



dangerous. An excellent coach-road leads from Kiama up the mountain to Moss Vale, 
passing through the village of Robertson, and skirting the Wingecarribee Swamp. This 
is a favourite drive, and picturesque from start to finish. 

The drive from Kiama southward to Broughton Creek, a hundred and nine miles 
distant from the metropolis, is one of the greatest treats the hospitable residents of the 
coast can place on a traveller's programme. Several small bays, each worthy of a 
sketching party's efforts, are passed, and every mile of the way is pleasantly diversified 
until the pretty village of Geringong is reached. Here, too, there is dairy-farming, and 
a small port from which in fair weather produce can be sent. At this point ends for 
a time the freehold system of farming, for here is the boundary of the great estate of 
the Berry family. Broughton Creek is a village surrounded by fertile soil, which yields 
large crops of maize and considerable quantities of dairy produce. A steamer, put on 
specially by the late Mr. Berry for the use of his tenants, plies regularly between the 
metropolis and the Creek, which is entered from the Crookhaven and Shoalhaven Rivers. 
Ten miles southward, the wide low-lying alluvial flats of the Shoalhaven River contain 
no fewer than twenty-one towns or villages, of which, including the farms of Broughton 
Creek, there are about fifty thousand acres under crop, the Berry Estate comprising 
nearly one hundred thousand acres in this locality. The principal product is maize, of 
which in good seasons very large yields are obtained. The Shoalhaven River is crossed 
by a bridge e.xtending over one thousand lineal feet of water. Nowra, a thriving 
business place, is the principal town and has the chief public offices of the district. A 
good road runs from Nowra up to Moss Vale on the table-land, the coach covering 
the distance in about six hours. This road is not a uniform ascent to the plateau, for 
after rising some distance it descends into the lovely Kangaroo Valley, evidently once 
the bed of a lake, and now a singularly rich flat, sheltered on all sides, except where 
the Creek winds its rugged way down to the Shoalhaven River. An admirable road has 
been cut up the mountain, and not far from the summit are the Fitzroy Falls. The 
view ascending or descending is quite equal to any on the coast ; indeed, the journey 
down the Bulli Pass along the coast to Shoalhaven, and up the seaward slope of the 
mountain to Moss Vale, is one which all travellers in search of fresh natural beauties should 
not fail to make, as it includes some of the most charming coast views of the colony. 

South of the Shoalhaven River there are forty miles of sandstone country to cross, 
the soil of which is not inviting to the agriculturist. The road passes through dense 
forests utilized to some extent by shipments made at Jervis Bay, near which there are 
some good coal-lands as jet unworked, for. the simple reason that other parts of the 
coast meet the present demand. After a dreary drive or ride the traveller reaches a 
prosperous dairy-farming district, of which the chief centres of settlement are Milton and 
Ulladulla. The latter is on the shores of the harbour, which is sufficiently commodious 
for the requirements of the district. In this locality there are beds of clay well suited 
for the manufacture of the best kinds of pottery, and, although not now utilized, it is 
thought, and with good reason, that the time is not far distant when Ulladulla may 
become an Australian Staffordshire. . 

The next settlement worthy of note is Moruya, about two hundred miles south of 
the metropolis. Slate and granite quarries have been opened in the neighbourhood, and 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



285 



there is a silver-mine, the ores of which, although somewhat refractory, are likely at some 
future time to be made to yield their treasures at a cost which will leave a profit to 
the workers. There is an extensive business done by the proprietors of saw-mills, and 
the farmers around raise crops which well repay them for their toil and enterprise. 




WOLLONGONG FROM THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 



About a quarter of a century ago an enterprising mercnant, the late Mr. Thomas 
Sutcliffe Mort, became possessed of thirty thousand acres of pasture-land at Bodalla, 
sixteen miles south of Moruya, and manfully set to work with the object of teaching his 
fellow-colonists how dairy-farming should be conducted. Capital 'was not spared. Before 
the first cheese was fit for the table forty thousand pounds had been expended. The 
output now is three hundred tons of cheese annually, and every winter twelve hundred 
p^s are slaughtered and sent to Sydney as bacon and hams. The system of farming 
pursued is the best known, and the venture, as its founder anticipated, has been 
productive of much national good. On an eminence overlooking the village stands the 
Mort Memorial Church, a model of choice ecclesiastical architecture. The geology of 
Bodalla is quartzite and clay-slate, with rich alluvial flats through which the Tuross winds, 
and this formation continues almost to Bega, when basalt again occurs, overlying granite 
and old rocks of probably Devonian origin. 

Beyond Bodalla is the pretty little village of Cobargo. Ten miles off is its sea-port, 
Bermagui, near which, not many years ago, rich deposits of gold were found beneath 
the sands of the sea-shore. There was a great "rush" of diggers, but the field was soon 
proved to be but small — not, however, before Mr. Lamont Young, a clever geologist of 
the Mines Department, and a small party, sent to make a special survey, disappeared in 



:86 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



a most mysterious manner. Their boat was found, but no trace of their bodies. The 
occurrence is known to this day as "The Bermagui Mystery." 

Bega, one of the most prosperous districts of the coast, next claims attention. The 
town is placed on a well-chosen site, and being the mart of the district, is a thriving 
centre. The sea-port, Tathra, is ten miles off, but farther south is a more reliable outlet 
at Eden. The principal industries of the district are maize-growing, cheese-making and 
pig-slaughtering; Bega bacon commanding the highest price in the metropolitan markets. 
On the road inland stands Candelo, a town romantically situated, and the centre of one 
of the best areas of the many good portions of the district. Twofold Bay, however, is 
not so much used as the founders of the town expected, steamers of small draught 
being able to make Tathra and Merimbula, which are nearer by road to the chief town. 
Shipments of cattle, however, are frequently made to Tasmania, and vessels bound for 
Victoria occasionally make it a port of call. 

From the coast to the cooler regions of the table-land two roads are open for 
choice. l*"or a journey in the saddle the rugged picturesque track, known by the team- 
sters as •' The Big Jack," may be taken ; but if coaching or buggy-driving is preferred 
Tantawanglo Road is the easier. A day's ride from Bega can be made to cover the 
intervening space, but it is pleasanter to travel slowly and tarry for a day at Candelo, 
distant fourteen miles. Prior to 1885, the last year of what may be, without exaggeration, 
ternied the " Great Drought," Candelo was justly considered one of the most prosperous 
farming centres of the colony. Luxuriant pastures and never-failing creeks, aided by a 
climate with which no fault could be found, furnished advantages which industrious 
farmers were not slow in appreciating. But when, after years of prosperity, drought 
came, its results were disastrous in the extreme. There were no stores of fodder to meet 
the emergency, and immense sums were spent in purchasing hay and corn to save the 
valuable dairy-herds. In too many cases the drought outlasted the bank accounts, and 
many of the farmers had to face what they had never even dreamt of — ruin. The frowns of 
adverse fortune have now disappeared ; prosperity again crowns the efforts of the farmer, and 
Candelo, with its many picturesque homesteads and cheerful gardens, is once more gay. 

It is necessary to rise about two thousand feet before the edge of the great 
pastoral country, Monaro, is reached. To the west, not many miles off, are the Gipps- 
land Ranges, and closer still the boundary line which divides the mother-colony from 
Victoria. In front is the cozy town of Bombala, surrounded by grazing estates and farms, 
the soil of which is as good as any in the colony. .Such country as this is admirably 
suited for farmers in all but one particular — its distance from profitable markets. Hops, 
equal to the best Kentish, and fruits of almost all kinds may here be grown. In years 
to come, and as population increases, the land may be put to its most profitable uses 
and large quantities of produce shipped from Eden. There are, too, lodes of valuable 
ore — gold, silver and lead- — which may materially assist the district's exports. The late 
Rev. W. B. Clarke, an eminent geologist, who carefully examined this part of the 
country, used to say that some day Bombala would be a place of big chimneys. But 
though promising indications abound, no profitable mine has as yet established the 
popular belief in the treasures under-ground. The geological formation of the locality is 
Silurian, and some of the organic remains found embedded in the slate are believed to 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



287 



be the oldest in New South Wales, and in the same district are some of the most 
recent. Wood found embedded in the ground when first exhumed can be worked with 
carpenters' tools, but after being exposed for some time to a dry atmosphere assumes 
the characteristics of bituminous lignite. 

Turning northwards from Bombala over basaltic country, a long day's journey brings 
the traveller to the important town of Cooma, towards which a railway from Goulburn 




has been recently extended. This is the 
great pastoral centre of the south-east 
corner of the colon)'. Thirteen years ago 
a prison was erected here which has filled 

successively the purposes of a temporary lunatic asylum and a lands office, although it is 
intended ultimately for a penal establishment. But more harmonious with the surroundings, 
which are grand in point of scenic attraction, is the distant Hospital, a well-conducted and 
very useful institution. A few miles off, the River Murrumbidgee, a shallow stream, flows 
sluggishly through rich tracts of deep black soil. The country around for the greater 
part is bare of timber, but on the ridge-tops are fringes of stunted trees. Each hill has 
its spring, each gull)- its stream, no part of the colony being better watered or less 
subject to drought. Its grazing capabilities have long stood severe tests, and it still 
ranks high for stock-breeding purposes. Like Bombala, the localit)- is also well adapted 
for the plough. Better wheat-soil could not be desired. In a geological sense this 
southern district closely resembles the northern table-lands, the formation being precisely 
similar; on the coast, silurian rocks; on the mountain-tops, basalt and large areas of 
granite. Cooma is about two thousand seven hundred feet above sea-level ; and, being 
much exposed to the chilling blasts which come from the Snowy Range, its winters are 
extraordinarily severe. Colder still is Kiandra, which is north-west from Cooma a long 
day's ride. Here, in the heart of the Australian Alps, although only three hundred and 
twenty miles from the metropolis, the seeker after adventures may indulge in Arctic 
.sea.sons and experience the sensation of being " snowed up " for months at a stretch. 



>88 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



the elevation being nearly five thousand feet ; but during the spring and summer months 
Kiandra enjoys an enviable climate. Its establishment is due, like that of many other 
Australian towns, to the energy of the adventurous digger. Nearly thirty years ago, 
when the country traversed by the Snowy River was occasionally used by a few squatters 
as a free summer pasture for their herds, a stock-man accidentally discovered gold in one 
of the water-courses. The news soon spread, and there was a " rush " of gold-seekers 
from all parts of Australia. The field, however, proved to be small, and gradually the 
population dwindled away, but there are still many promising mines on the Ranges, and 
Kiandra maintains its character as a prosperous, although quiet little settlement. A little 
to the north of Kiandra are the celebrated caves of Yarrangobilly, only second in size, 
wonder and beauty to those of Jenolan. 

On the western slopes of the Snowy Range there are the fertile Tumut Valley and 
the mining regions known as Tumberumba and Adelong, the last-mentioned being the 
oldest and most permanent reefing-district of the colony. It has payable gold to a depth 
of below a thousand feet, and is surrounded by several patches of alluvial country, 
from which large quantities have been obtained. Tumberumba is a thriving, salubrious 
little town, with gold in its creek-beds and on its hill-sides. Tumut, placed iii the 
centre of a rich valley, from which large crops of wheat, maize and tobacco are 
obtained, is one of the most substantial towns of the South. 





By recrossing the Snowy Ranges to the east, the main road from Cooma to 
Queanbeyan, Bungendore and Goulburn is struck. Along this route a railway has recently 
been laid down and is now open for traffic. The most important centre on the way is 
Queanbeyan, a favourite district with agriculturists, about ten thousand acres being under 




CARLOTTA ARCH, JENOLAN CAVES. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 289 

cultivation, and although the soil has been worked for many years its yield of cereals 
is still heavy. Pastoral occupation also holds its place in the district, nearly five hundred 
thousand sheep and over twenty thousand head of cattle finding pasturage in the fertile 
lands surrounding the town. Braidwood, another good farming centre, is a few miles 
to the eastward. It for many years received substantial aid from the gold-fields, of 
which Arahien was the principal, but it is now, like many other places, suffering through 
the decreased yields of the precious metal. Araluen is fifteen miles distant, and although 
now partially deserted, recent discoveries of rich reefs furnish some hope that this 
portion of the colony will again become prosperous. 

At Goulburn the branch railway comes into the Main Southern Line, which 
proceeds westward from this point. A little to the north of it lies Crookwell, one of 
the numerous prolific agricultural districts of the South, but like many other fertile locali- 
ties, needing a railway to encourage its occupiers, who are now to a great extent 
hampered by high rates for carriage. F"ifteen miles westward from Goulburn is Breadal- 
bane, nearly two thousand three hundred feet above sea-level, the highest point of the 
Main Southern Line. The characteristic of the country here is the broad level plain, 
excellent as pasture-land, but exposed to very keen winds in winter. From this there is 
a steep decline of over two hundred feet in twelve miles to the Fish River. The soil 
is poor, and the distance dividing the cultivated patches becomes greater. It is not 
until the Yass River is in sight, one hundred and eighty-seven miles from the metro- 
polis, that substantial settlement is apparent. Yass, with a climate more than ordinarily 
favourable to the grazier, affords pasturage to many horses, cattle and sheep. 

The wide-spread impression that New South Wales is a colony in which the 
agriculturist of small means cannot proceed far on the high-road to fortune, is to a 
very great extent dispelled by a journey from Yass to the Murray River. It is perfectly 
true that the plough has been but slightly used — that not one acre of land per head 
of the population is cultivated ; but it is also plain that there are millions of acres the 
soil of which would amply repay tillage. Fashion is potent even in the commonplace 
matter of land-utilization. In the early days of settlement it was the fashion to keep 
sheep. Shepherds tended small flocks and stock-riders kept watch over herds of cattle. 
When these men and their relatives became land-owners the work still' moved in the 
old groove. There was no thought of sending wheat, oats or barley to the coast ; 
roads were bad ; and farming was much heavier labour than grazing and clipping sheep. 
But enough was done to prove the great fertility of the soil ; and the alluvial gold- 
fields, by creating a local market, greatly stimulated the formation of small farms. 
Thus around Yass many farming-centres were established — Burrowa, Binalong, Galong, 
Rocky Ponds and Murrumburrah are all localities where the plough has done no little 
service, and the southern half of the main railway line and its branches run through 
first-class agricultural land. 

Burrowa, north of the main line, thirty-eight miles from Yass, is a town situated in 
a broad area of cultivated land, while Murrumburrah, a railway township two hundred 
and thirty miles from Sydney, is also favoured with good soil. It is the point from 
which a branch line runs northward to join the main western route, which, after passing 
through Young and Cowra, it strikes at Blayney. Young, a prosperous grazing and 



390 



A US TRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



farming centre, 
and one of the 
most important 
settlements of the 
South, was named 
after Sir John 
Young, one of the 
colony's former 
Governors. In 
i860 the spot 




Ifev 



h 




OHi-C«t KOO 






whereon it stands was a 
sheep-walk, but gold was 
discovered, and attracted 
thousands of diggers. It 
proved a very rich field, 
and when the escort re- 
turns commenced to 
dwindle, attention was 
paid to the soil. The 
pick and shovel were dropped and the 
plough and harrow used. About thirty 
thousand acres were cultivated ; and 
the yearly crops of cereals now make 
a total of nearly three hundred and 
fifty thousand bushels,- while the vine- 
yards yield close on ten thousand 
gallons of wine. About fifty miles 
farther to the north is Cowra, with 
gold and copper mines, and soil which 
regularly produces large crops. Both 
of these centres have only recently obtained railway communication • a loop-line now 
opens to them the principal markets of the West and the South. 

Returning to Murrumburrah, and travelling twenty-three miles west along the Main 
Southern Line, Cootamundra, another important town, is reached. During the past five 
years what was a mere road-side village has grown to a town with large and expensive 
buildings, while the country around is well farmed, and produces wheat of admirable 






mort's cheese-farm at hodalla. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



291 



(luality. Thirty miles to the north-west is Temora, which a few years ago was a large 
gold-field with ;i population of several thousands. Its mineral returns are now small, 
hut being in the heart of a good agricultural district it will soon regain vigour. From 
Cootamundra a branch railway line runs to Gundagai, a thriving town situated thirty-four 
miles distant, 
at a [joint 
which is the 
head of navi- 
gation of the 
Murrumbid- 
gee River. 
The bridge 
which spans 
it, together 
with its via- 




TlIE WHARF AT TATHRA. 



duct, is nearly three-quarters of a mile in 
length, the low lands around the town 
being subject to floods. The original 
township, which was unfortunately built 
on the river-flat, was almost washed away 
by a freshet which occurred in 1852, 
nearly four-score dwellings being wrecked 
and many of their occupants drowned. But Gundagai is again a flourishing place with 
excellent prospects ; its soil is rich, and there are gold-reefs, slate-quarries, and rich 
seams of asbestos to be developed. Adelong and Tumut are on the southern side of 
Gundagai, and materially assist its trade. 

From Cootamunda the main line turns to the south • to Junee, a point from which 
the south-western branch to Hay extends, and the first halting-place on any of the 
colony's lines at which refreshments could be obtained. On the strength of its railway 
importance Junee has become a sturdy place ; but the town can make little progress 
without a good system of water-supply. 

At this point, half-way from Sydney to Melbourne, the country begins to fall. 
Junee is nine hundred and eighty-five feet above sea-level ; Albur)', one hundred miles 
farther south, is lower by four hundred and fifty feet. Looking to the west, the station 
at Hay, nearly one hundred and seventy miles off, has an elevation of only three hundred 
and \ivft feet. These facts indicate the existence of a large water-shed, which the map 
shews to be drained by the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers. As explained in a 
former part, these water-arteries materially assisted the arduous labour of the pioneer 



292 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



squatters who were the first to put the great western and south-western plains to a 
profitable use. The Murrumbidgee, which was a shallow stream near Cooma, becomes a 
large body of water at Gundagai. In all it runs a course of thirteen hundred and fifty 
miles, and along nearly one half of this distance it is navigable. Near Balranald it falls 
into the Murray, which flows along the southern boundar)' of the colony, being navigable 
nearly all the distance When it was ascertained that two great rivers joined the 
Murray, and that it was possible to sail from the interior of this colony to the sea or 
to points close to sea-ports, two very important conditions of settlement were satisfactorily 
met. It was plain that supplies could be obtained, and in return produce sent away. 
It is necessary to mention these particulars at this point, as nearly all the towns about 
to be visited are the outcome of the system of settlement which the rivers encouraged. 
Many years ago, when all the traffic of the great south-western pastoral country was 
performed by steam-boats and river-barges, the wool, hides and tallow were all shipped 
for England from the sea-ports of South Australia and Victoria. The occupiers of the 
country had faint hazy notions that at some time in the far-off future the centre of 
Government, to which they grudgingly contributed, might send them railways. There was 
on the rivers great discontent, which gradually gained force until it took the form of 




GUiNDAGAl. 



an appeal for separation. It was urged that the river-country should have the control 
of its affairs, and should be named Riverina. This proposal met with powerful opposition, 
and was ineffective. The Riverine towns were much agitated, and vows of vengeance 
agamst Sydney and all her friends were made and duly registered. Victoria was 
perfectly willing to include the dissatisfied territory within her boundaries, but the 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



293 



ini 



interesting little fable concerning the fish, the frying-pan and the fire being still remem- 
bered, the annexation did not take place. After a long period of unfriendliness the 
rly navvy made peace between this outlying district and the metropolis. Having 

conquered the stubborn 
mountains, he came 
speedily across the plains 
and laid the iron rails 
down on -the river-banks, 
crossing the Murrumbid- 
gee at Wagga Wagga, 
three hundred and nine 
miles from Sydney, and 
then rushing off to the 
Murray, which he reached 
at Albury. Not satisfied, 
he came back to Junee, 
and ran his lines along the 
north bank of the Mur- 
rumbidgee, all the way to 
Hay, and made a branch' 
from a point on the Mur- 
rumbidgee known as Nar- 
randera, seventy miles 
south-west, to the pastoral 
settlement of Jerilderie. 
Then arose a struggle 
between the rival ports of 
Sydney and Melbourne for this southern country's 
trade. The river-trafific was soon overcome, but it 
took some years to bring even a part of Riverina's 
custom to Sydney, and it was done only by an 
artificial arrangement of the railway rates, by which 
the cost of carriage for long distances was reduced. 
An area, comprising nearly three-fourths of the 
country through which the lines to Ha)- and Jerilderie pass, has been alienated from 
the Crown, through being either selected or purchased under the Land Act of 1861 ; 
the estates are large, some comprising a quarter of a million acres each. The 
river-frontages are very valuable ; they are nearly all now used for grazing sheep, but 
by-and-b)'e there . will be powerful irrigating plants and broad cultivation paddocks. 
Give this river-country moisture, and the soil is so rich that it will produce immense 
crops ; even now there is no better land for wool-raising in Australia, a sheep to each 
acre being about its actual sustaining power. 

As the engine speeds along from Junee some small estates are crossed where 
hundreds of acres are under cereal crops, mainly grown for hay. Then appear on the- 




COOTAMUNDRA. 



294 



A US TRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



right of the line tracts covered by dense growths of pine-trees. Farther north pine- 
scrubs have covered miUions of acres of land and ruined many pastoralists, the young 
pines growing very quickly and very densely, and completely beating the grazier back. 
On a short lease it does not pay to clear the ground, and in order to recover it for 
grass it is proposed to grant a longer tenure. On the left, close to the River, there 
are wool-sheds and buildings such as are useful to the sheep-farmer. Each farm or 
scjuattage has its garden, where beautiful flowers and choice fruits are plentiful. Sixty 
miles from Junee is Narrandera, where a substantial lattice-girder bridge crosses the River. 
The population of the place is supported by various industries, timber-cutting being the 
principal, the red-gum and pine, which grow on the river-flats, being of excellent 
quality. There are good farms, too, in the neighbourhood, and excellent shows of agri- 
cultural produce and pure-bred stock are held annually. The sheep of the district, bred 
from the best strains that can be secured from Victoria and Tasmania, are of a superior 
class, an average "clip" of seven pounds per sheep being frequently obtained. 

One hundred miles west from Narrandera is the very important pastoral township of 
Hay. It is the point on the Murrumbidgee where the overland traffic from the Darling 
crosses the River to make straight for Deniliquin across the Old Man Plains, and it is 
the natural business-centre for a large area of pastoral country, as well as the cathedral 
city of the new Riverina episcopal diocese endowed by the late Hon, John Campbell. 
The streets are wide and shaded by trees, and some of the buildings are more than 
ordinarily large. Besides two local newspapers and an adequate system of water-supply. 
Hay boasts a masonic hall, three theatres, two breweries, a hospital, an athena;um and 
a free library. Of course an agricultural society and a jockey club are among the 

institutions of the place ; likewise a 
customs house, for it is a port of 
entry. Hay is over four hundred 
and fifty miles from the metropolis, 
and at present the western terminus 
of the sj'stem of railways constructed 
to catch the Riverina trade, but it 
is expected that the line will be 
extended before long to the Darling. 
The south-western route secures 
much of the wool grown in the 
Lachlan River country, and takes an 
active share in the trade of the 
pastoral area between the Lachlan 
and the Bogan Rivers. The district 
of Hay alone pastures a million 
sheep and six thousand head of larger stock, and the traffic to Booligal, Hillston, 
Wilcannia and Deniliquin is extensive. The shipping business is now at a very low ebb, 
but the railway is a beneficial substitute, it being much better to have a certainty in 
the matter of time of journey than the tantalizing chances connected with water-carriage. 
.Yet there are residents of Hay who lament the departure of the "good old times" 




THE PUBLIC GARDENS AT DENILIQUIN. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



295 



when wool and supplies were often delayed for months on flats or snags, and when 
heavily-laden barges used occasionally to " turn turtle " and seek repose on the river-bed. 
Jerilderie, a pastoral town surrounded by immense freehold estates and a few selec- 
tions, is situated on the Billabong Creek, sixty-five miles distant by rail from Narran- 
dera. Sheep-farming on a scientific plan is being con- 
ducted here, the cultivation paddocks playing an im- 
portant part. The green crops, some of which are 
conserved in silos, are produced by pumping water from 




-: thp: town hall, dkmi.iquin. 

-. - the beds of the creeks, where it is upheld 

•-_ by dams, and allowing it to flow over the 

planted ground. 

There is a break in the railway com- 

munication between Jerilderie and Denili- 
quin, and travellers who are bound south have to undergo a night's journey of about 
eighty miles by coach, which crosses the River by a bridge four hundred yards in length. 
Broad plains are traversed — the world-famed salt-bush country, once remarkably rich in 
herbage, but now suffering from the evil effects of over-stocking. No pastures could 
successfully withstand the heavy strain which constant feeding off imposed, and the saline 
herbage and tlie best of the natural grasses have almost completely disappeared. Long 
seasons of drought, too, have injured this ordinarily rich pastoral tract. During the last 
drought there were immense losses of valuable stock, but late rains have done excellent 
.service, and Riverina is again in full bloom. 

The coach journey is drearily monotonous, but as the sun rises the landscape 
becomes more varied, glimpses are had of the timber-belts and numerous cultivated 
patches near the banks of the Edward River, upon which is situated the thriving town 
of Deniliquin. Mere spreads a vineyard, there a corn-field ; grapes abound — large, luscious, 
good as any produced in Australia; for Nature has been bounteous in this locality; 
though hard and protracted have been the struggles to obtain land. Pastoral lessee has 
fought selector, and many a fat lawsuit has been the result. Fortunately for all parties 



296 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

concerned, the warfare is now almost concluded ; and. save that an occasional squabble 
occurs over some reserve, there is peace. 

If Hay is massive and rectangular, Deniliquin is charmingly irregular. At every 
turn there is something to admire. Its public garden and lake, with shady trees and 
bowers, are bewitchingly attractive. It is a busy place, too, with a fine town hall, which 
is the neater building, though its court house is the larger ; the latter is also superior 
to any justice hall in the metropolis. The local Pastoral Society is noted for the e.\cel- 
lence of its shows of sheep, while there is a race-course as good as any in the colony. 
The railway from Deniliquin runs forty-five miles to meet the Victorian line at Echuca 
on the River Murray, the complete distance to Melbourne being only about two hundred 
miles. Ten years have passed since a private company obtained the right to construct 
the link which binds Deniliquin to the Victorian capital, the object being to secure the 
western trade to Melbourne. The concession was a great boon to Riverina ; and, despite 
the subsequent extension of the New South Wales railway to Ha)', the private line 
still does a good business. Jerilderie is not more than fifty miles from Deniliquin, so 
it will be seen that this portion of the colony is well supplied with means of speedy 
transit. The Deniliquin State School is one of the best in the colony ; indeed, taken as 
a whole, the town has received a fair share of the public funds. The district pastures 
more than a million sheep and ten thousand horses and cattle ; the pure-bred herds and 
flocks, of which there are several, attract many customers ; agriculture is increasing every 
year, and already some of the large freehold estates are being divi'ded so that they may 
be leased or sold for farming purposes. 

The border town on the Murray nearest to Deniliquin is Moama, formerly known 
as Maiden's Punt. A railway bridge now spans the river to Echuca, a town on the 
Victorian side, which has wholly outstripped its northern rival. Moama has a large dock, 
and takes an active part in the shipping trade, and being on the border has its customs 
house. But it is on the wrong side of the river for trade, and the country behind it 
is more used for pasture than for tillage. There is some cultivation done, and it has a 
store of wealth in its- large forests of red-gum trees, which, however, are now strictl)' 
conserved for future use. 

Down the Murray from this point there are several pastoral centres. Euston, six 
hundred and fifty miles south-west of .Sydney, is a crossing-place, and has a customs 
station, but Wentworth is the principal town of this far-distant quarter of the colony. 
Here on the banks of the Darling, near its confluence with the Murray, and over seven 
hundred miles from the metropolis, is a flourishing settlement. Being close to the borders of 
South Australia there is regular communication with Adelaide, and it is expected that both 
Victoria and South Australia will stretch their railways as iar as Wentworth. It is probable 
that some time in the future the South-Western Line of this colon)- may be extended 
so far, but in the absence of railway lines Wentworth has an extensive steam-boat trade. 

Up the Murray from Moama is the delightful little centre, Corowa, which is four 
hundred miles from the metropolis and forty miles west of Albury. This is one of the 
most fertile parts of the valley of the Murray — a perfect paradise for agriculturists ; a 
place with a great future, pasturing at present about a million head of stock, much of 
its progress being due to the efforts of the local Agricultural Society. Over the 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



297 



Murray, and only half a mile off, there is a railway station affording cheap communica- 
tion with Melbourne, which thus obtains a considerable portion of the trade of this district. 

From this point a northerly course to the Murrumbidgee leads over a pastoral 
country of first-class quality. En rotUe is Urana, distant seventy-six miles from the main 





^ ''~^HP, 



s?-^"' 





^^y tllflj;.'':' 



THE MURRUMBIDGEE AT WAGGA WAGGA. 



railway line at Wagga Wagga, and only seventeen miles from the Jerilderie branch line. 
Around the small lake from which the town takes its name about one million sheep 
are pastured. The farmers are increasing in this locality, the soil being as good as any 
in Riverina, though, as in the case of many other districts, it is a difficult matter to 
obtain land. It is now seen that it would have been more conducive to the prosperity 
of New South Wales if the public lands had not been so freely parted with by the 



298 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRAl^ED. 

State at a time when there was only a pastoral demand for it. The opportunities 
afforded to acquire large holdings tempted many capitalists to invest to an extent which 
made borrowing a necessity. Bad seasons and high rates of interest have placed a heavy 
handicap on the big freeholds. Hence springs the hope that the time is not far 
distant when Riverina will have jpore farms than sheep-walks, and export as many hogs- 
heads of wine as bales of wool ; for high prices are required to keep the bank balance 
of squattages on the right side. 

When travelling through New South Wales the visitor will be impressed by the 
number of towns and villages ; the proportion of these being somewhat great when the 
total population is taken into consideration. Despite the fact that nearly one-third of the 
million of people who form the latter is massed in or around the metropolis, there are 
in the country about five hundred centres which have about them the material necessary 
to support a much larger number of workers than are at present available. The South 
especially is very thickly dotted over with small towns, and this spreading of business 
di'pdis is a healthy sign. There is, at least in an industrial sense, the frame-work upon 
which may be reared a large edifice. Regarding the present, however, it is to many 
puzzling how some of the towns manage to exist. The proprietors of inns and stores 
must have customers, or the shutters would not be down, and the blacksmiths and 
wheelwrights need occasionally to work. It is necessary to explain to the inquirer that 
the business done in most of these centres is of the intermittent class — that there are 
seasons during which a flood of business covers the settlement. In Jul)' the shearers 
are on their way to the stations to gather the great wool-harvest ; in September they 
are either going home or they are bound for other localities in w^hich the clipping is 
not begun until later in the year. The teamsters, too, are passing, so that they may 
take part in conveying the fleece to the coast. The wool season lasts for more than a 
quarter of the year, and before it has closed there is work to do in the cultivation 
paddccks. The hay and wheat crops are ready for the reaping-machine, and the threshers 

follow in its wake. The nomadic workers 
who assist farmers and wool-growers are 
not economical in the matter of dis- 
bursing their earnings ; they spend their 
wages freely — in some cases lavishly. 
Thus the towns have the harvest of the 



•O-t'^^'^^ 





harvests. Each place with any preten- 
sion to importance has its jockey club 
. ^. , , and its atrricultural society, which pro- 

A FAC-SLMILE OF THE CLAIMANTS HAND-WRITING. * J ' i 

vide the annual shows lasting three or 
four days, and during this time the inns are crowded. In a few years, when population 
increases, the towns will have business of a more solid character^ — vineyards and orchards 
will occupy spots where now are to be seen only flocks of sheep ; there is plenty of 
material to work upon, and the . towns in their present condition may be regarded as the 
survey-marks which usually precede extensive settlement. 

Returning to Junee Junction, from which point the branch to Hay went off, with 
its sub-branch to Jerilderie, the main line to the frontier has to be followed. Its course 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



299 



is nearly south over a level fertile country till it strikes the Murrumbidgee, which is 
crossed by a costly bridge — one of the principal engineering works which hindered the 
extension of the Southern Line. The main channel of the River is spanned by two 
continuous wrought-iron lattice-girders of six hundred and forty feet each, the supports 
being cast-iron cylinders, nine feet, in diameter. On the north side there are two hun- 
dred and fifty-seven spans of thirty 
feet each, and on the south fifty-six 
spans of the same width, so that in 
the event of floods there may be a 
good outlet for the powerful stream, 
the River here being wide and deep, 
and havino- chained much force and 
volume on its western course from 
Gundagai. The necessity for pre- 
cautions of this kind was forcibly 
illustrated some years ago, when 
the mountain waters came down 
with force and made a huge gulf in 
the railway embankment close to 
Cootamundra, thus causing the 
wreckage of a passenger train. To 
the right, on a level which is con- 
siderably lower than that occupied 
by the railway line, stands one of 
the most important towns of the 
South, whose name, Wagga Wagga, 
is not unfamiliar to dwellers on the 
other side of the globe. Its fame, 
indeed, is wide-spread, it having 

been the place in which the claimant of the great Tichborne estates was twenty-five years 
ago unearthed. On the 26th of July, 1865, there appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald 
an advertisement offering a handsome reward to an)' person who would furnish information 
which would lead to the discovery of the fate of one Roger Charles Tichborne, a young 
gentleman who had sailed from the port of Rio Janeiro twelve years before in a ship 
named La Bella. It was thought that this vessel was wrecked, and that a number of her 
passengers had been picked up and brought to Australia. The Tichborne which the adver- 
tisement sought was described as being about thirty-two years of age, and of a delicate 
condition. He was heir to all the estates left by his father. Sir James Tichborne, Bart. 
It happened that there was residing at Wagga Wagga a rough burly butcher known as 
Tom Castro, and a sharp solicitor — with the keenness for which the legal profession is 
remarkable — discovered in this vendor of chops, steaks and sausages, the identical scion of 
English nobility to whom the advertisement referred. The announcement took Wagga 
Wagga by surprise — even the most intimate friends or most liberal customers of Castro had 
not entertained the faintest idea that they had been so highly honoured. He was not an 




THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT. 



300 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

educated man. but he had certain birth-marks, and he remembered certain family par- 
ticulars; and this so far impressed his discoverers that he was sent to England, where, 
after some delay, he waited upon the venerable lady whose maternit)- he claimed. The 
genuineness of his claim was. however, disputed by those in possession, and a case, the 
most remarkable which .has occupied the attention of the English Courts for many 
years, was the result. The claimant was condemned for perjury and cast into an 
English prison, where he remained for many years. 

Although the country around \\'agga Wagga is for the greater part devoted to 
grazing, the farmers are not without representation, nearly thirty thousand acres being 
under cultivation, and over a million and a half of sheep, with about twenty thousand 
head of cattle and horses, being pastured in the district. The grazing properties of this 
portion of the Murrumbidgee are held in high estimation by capitalists, and between the 
years 1872 and 1880 many of the stations were sold at high prices. Seasons of drought, 
however, much affected the district during the succeeding five years, but it is now again 
in a prosperous condition. 

In sporting matters Wagga Wagga has a strong lead, its jockey club being the 
most enterprising of its class, and the first to offer large sums as prizes for principal 
races. Besides the Race-course there is close to the town a large show-ground recently 
occupied by the local Agricultural Society. The shipping trade of the River is now but 
ver)' small, Wagga Wagga having good facilities for the transit of goods by rail to 
Sydney and Melbourne. In consequence of having a good water-supply it is probable 
that this town will shortly become the site of extensive railway works, and a proposal 
has been made that a branch of the Southern Line should be extended from this point 
of the Murrumbidgee in a south-easterly direction to Tumberumba, near the upper part 
of the River Murray. 

Passing south from Wagga Wagga the line runs to Albury, a frontier town on the 
Murray, and the head of navigation. No section of the colony is better suited for 
the breeding of high-class horses, cattle and sheep than the district between these two 
towns ; indeed, the latter are remarkably well favoured by the climate, and produce fine 
wool of a superior quality. Pure-bred short-horn cattle, of which there are several herds, 
thrive, and help to swell the amounts which change hands at the annual stock-fairs. A 
few miles out in an easterly direction at Tarcutta, there are several reefs from which 
large quantities of gold are regularly obtained, and farther along in the same direction 
there is, in the heart of a good agricultural tract of country, the busy little settlement 
of Germanton. The grape-vine flourishes here, and although the vineyards are not large 
they give profitable employment to many hands. The nearest railway station is Culcairn, 
about half-way between Wagga Wagga and Albury. 

The Upper Murray country, on the western slopes of the Snowy Range, although 
in many parts rugged, is valuable for horse-breeding. Some of the best horse-stock in 
Australia is from the hills of this district — a fact recognized by the buyers of Indian 
remounts. Down the Murray, two miles from the River and twelve from Albury, lies 
the little settlement of Bowna, surrounded by small farms ; and a few miles off at 
Tabletop is a large freehold pastoral propert)-, where horse-breeding is conducted on a 
very extensive scale The country to the east of the railway line is picturesque, the 



V 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



301 



scenery being agreeably diversified by a range of hills, of which the castellated mount 
known as Tabletop is the most lofty. In a south-westerly direction is the agricultural 
settlement of Jindera, but the country for the greater part is used for sheei>grazing. A 
few miles from the traci<, at Gerogery, several Germans settled upon small vineyards, 
but it is not until Ettamogah, a point five miles north of the boundary, is in view 

that a fair idea of the agricultural wealth of the 
Murray Valley can be formed. On both sides of 




M^m^kmmjru 



THE ORIGINAL SITE Ul" THE CLAIMANTS SHOP. 

the line the hill-slopes are verdant with vine- 
yards, regularly yielding heavy crops of lus- 
cious grapes, which grow luxuriantly in the warm climate of a valley over five hundred 
and thirty feet above sea-level. The soil in this locality is derived from the decom- 
position of felspathic granite, which is scattered over the district, and occurs with 
schist and other crystalline rocks, forming a soil peculiarly favourable to the grape, 
which has been shewn to possess alcoholic properties scarcely approached, and seldom 
surpassed, by the grape in other countries. 

This part of the colony was discovered b)' the brave and adventurous explorers, 
flume and Hovell, who were chosen to explore the country as far as Western Port. 
They travelled through the Murray Valley, and on the north bank of the River there 
still stands a red-gum tree which bears witness to the fact by the following inscription 
skilfully carved on its trunk: ''Hovell, Nov. 17 x 24." The spot whereon the explorers 
were supposed to have camped was marked by a neat monument, which some vandals 
so disfigured that it was thought advisable to remove it to a safer site in the local 



?02 



^ USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Botanic Gardens, where it now stands. It bears the following inscription: "This monu- 
ment was erected by the inhabitants of the Hume River District in honour of Hamilton 
Hume, Esq., to commemorate his discovery of this river on the 17th of November, 
1824." The squatters followed Hume's track, and gradually a small settlement was 
formed; but it was not until Victoria had made some progress that a punt was placed 
on the Murray. Then followed the blacksmith's shop, the public-house, the store; and a 
few small patches were placed under crop. The discovery of gold on the Ovens River 
in Victoria materially assisted Albury, as did the services of several Germans, who set 
to work most industriously to cultivate the Murray Valley soil. The railway from 
Melbourne to the southern bank, now known as Wodonga, was opened in November, 
1^^; but it was not until eight years after that the Southern Line from Sydney reached 
this part of the border. Two years later the colonies were joined by an iron link — the 
massive railway bridge, which crosses the Murray at Albury. There was great rejoicing 
over the event, which was celebrated by a grand demonstration, at which were 
present the Governors of both colonies and a large assemblage of notabilities from 
Sydney and Melbourne. 

The capital of the southern colony had thus in the matter of railway communication 
with Albury, a long start of Sydney; indeed, prior to 1883, the Murray Valley was 
considered more Victorian than otherwise. The distance to Melbourne, being less than 
one hundred and ninety miles, naturally caused the greater part of the trade to gravi- 
tate southwards, and all business connections were with the southern port. Nor were 
these much disturbed by the opening of the Sydney line, the distance — nearly three 
hundred and ninety miles to Port Jackson — proving a handicap on the latter city's 
trade. But cheap rates and special concessions on the part of the railway authorities 
had the effect of turning the attention of the borderers to the northern capital. The 
Victorian tariff, too, being inimical to the interests of the Murray agriculturists, lost 
Melbourne many friends. 

Each side of the River has its customs house, with active officers, who are careful 
that no smuggling takes place on the dividing line. The Railway Station and its 
numerous buildings were constructed regardless of cost, and occupy an area over three- 
quarters of a mile in length and nine chains in width, the main building extending 
in one direction over three hundred feet. The New South Wales trains run through 
to Wodonga ; Victoria returns the compliment by sending her trains to Albury, the 
break of gauge necessitating a change of carriage and a transfer of goods. 

Albury is a picturesque place, the red brick buildings having an effective background 
in the purplish green hills which make a circle round the town. The Post and Tele- 
graph Offices are large handsome buildings, and the Hospital is considered one of the 
best institutions in the colony. Sixty thousand gallons of wine and a thousand tons of 
wheat are produced annually, and of the minor industries tobacco-culture takes the lead. 
An attempt was made to promote sericulture, but after a protracted and careful trial a 
disease, which proved fatal to the silk-worms, caused the abandonment of the industry. 
About a million head of stock are pastured in the district, and the Agricultural Society 
is justly considered one of the most important and most useful institutions in New 
South Wales, its annual show held in 1886 being the best in the colony for that year. 



1 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



303 




AN ALBURY VINEYARD. 

It is predicted, and with some confi- 
dence, tliat Albury will at some time in the 
future rank as a great city. The present 
rate of progress favours the prophecy that 
ere long the population, now about seven 
thousand, will reach the five-figure standard, 
turally and pastorally the district is eminently prosperous, 
and the vine-growing industry can be largely expanded, 
the latest departure in this direction being the successful 
establishment of champagne-making at one of the principal vineyards. The sparkling 
wines of Albury are sold mostly in London, where they command prices which bear 
comparison with those obtained for the medium qualities imported from France. 



Both agricul- 



3^ 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



As an instance of the changes which railways bring about, it may be mentioned 
that some years ago one of the wool-growers of the Murray sent his "clip" to Sydney, 
with directions to the teamsters to return as speedily as possible with stores. After the 
drays had set out the wool-grower left for England, which he reached safely, and had 
actually returned to Albury in time to meet his drays with the Sydney supplies — it had 
taken half a year to do what is now commonly accomplished in less than a day. 

River-traffic at this part of the Murray is now but of very slight importance. The 
trip down to the point of ddbouchnre in Lake Alexandrina, eighteen hundred miles distant, 
is tedious though interesting. But it is beginning to be seen that the great value of the 
River lies in its supply of water for irrigating purposes. In years to come, when the efforts 
of the Water Conservation Commissioners — now industriously employed in gauging the 
great stores of wealth which are wastefully poured into the Pacific Ocean — have taken 
effect, the water will be distributed over the soil, and the banks of the Murray, as well 
as much of the back country, will yield immense quantities of cereals and w'ine. Aus- 
tralia will then take a share in supplying food to coun- 
tries less favoured by Nature, and the occupiers of its 
soil will learn how to combat with adverse seasons. 
Victoria has made great progress in this direction. 

The description 
which has been given 
of the towns of the 
colony, and the rural 
districts of which they 
are centres, will have 
shown plainly that up 
to the present time the 
inland districts have 
been only very par- 
tially developed. The 
metropolis is dispro- 
portionately large as 
compared with the 
population of the in- 
terior, and even of the 
rural districts the coast- 
line has been much 
more thickly settled 
than the country west 
of the main range. 
This is incidental to 
the development of the colony. Its basis as a commercial community lay in the 
production of wool. The pioneer squatters overspread the country and turned the natural 
grasses to good account. W^ealth was thus created with great rapidity, and in a quantity 
surprisingly large compared with the amount of labour and capital employed. Perhaps 




CHANGING TRAINS AT ALBURY. 



THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



305 



there is no part of the world where early colonization was carried out with so little 
difficulty and with such good financial results as on the western slopes of New South 
Wales. The country was accessible, the. native population offered but little or no resistance, 
and the natural herbage was immediately available. But though wealth was rapidly 
accumulated, this sort of 
occupation did not lead to 
any large settlement of popu- 
lation. Few forms of indus- 
try demand comparatively so 
small an amount of labour 
as that of pastoral hus- 
bandry. Shepherds, hut- 
keepers and shearers, with a 
few drovers and overseers, 
constitute the industrial 
staff ; while a few townships 
on the main highways, with 
their public -houses, stores, 
blacksmiths' forges, and a 
small official staff to carry 
on the business of Govern- 
ment, do not materially add 
to the population. The first 
invasion of the pastoral soli- 
tudes was made by the miners. V/herever a gold-field was discpvered there was a rush of 
population. Diggers are an exacting class which pushes every other aside, and the grazing- 
right of the squatter had to retire before the demands of the invading miner, except in 
those few cases in which the grazier had been beforehand, and had secured a freehold. 
Where the gold-field was at all durable a township was established, and though these 
roughly-improvised settlements have often failed to realize first expectations, still no mining 
township once established has ever altogether disappeared. A farming population, too, always 
clusters round a gold-field as an immediate market for vegetables, hay and dairj'-produce, 
and the demand for these commodities is sure to create the supply. Mining, although a 
fascinating pursuit, is very uncertain in its rewards, and considerable experience has 
shown that in the long run it pays better to supply the miners with food than to dig 
for the precious metal. 

The next great cause of increase in the rural population has been the extension of 
railways, and they have promoted settlement by furnishing an outlet for the produce of 
the soil. The immediate local market is the best the farmer can have, but whenever 
in any good season that market is over-provided, the only available outlet is the 
metropolis. Many small trades, too, have sprung up on the lines of railway, and 
the demand for labour for the improvement of freehold properties has been greatly 
stimulated by the cheap carriage of material and appliances of all kinds. Without 
facilities for transit, extensive settlement in the interior is impossible; wool it is said 




;x.\il,\\A\ MAUiiN \\ .\\.\\\:\<\. 



306 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



can bear a waggon-carriage of three hundred miles when the market-price is favourable, 
but for the export of agricultural produce there must be either river or railway transit. 
The colony is now on the eve of another great improvement which more than anything 
else may be expected to promote the settlement of population in the interior — and that 
is irrigation. Although the rain-fall west of the range is comparatively light, and shades 
off towards the plains, as a study of the rain-fall map will show, still data enough have 
already been collected to show that a very large amount of water is available for 
irrigation if it be only carefully conserved and distributed ; and in addition to what falls on 
the surface there is the large under-current of water which has come down from 
Queensland. The soil in many parts is extraordinarily rich, and the heat forces vegeta- 
tion whenever there is moisture. It is only the irregularity of the rain-fall which has 
kept agriculture back, as it does not pay a farmer to lose three crops out of four ; 
but with a continuous supply of water there is no limit to the possibilities of cultivation 
in the interior of the colony. The only ground for anxiety is as to the extent and remu- 
nerativeness of the market for the produce. In the preceding pages we have described 
the country as it is ; but that which is, is only the beginning of that which shall be. 




THE JENOLAN CAVES. 




THE GRAND ARCH, EASTERN 
ENTRANCE. 



T N the description of the towns 

-*- lyintj along the Western Line, 
a passing mention was made of the 
Jenolan Caves, and an intimation 
was given that they would be 
separately described. They deserve 

this distinction, as being not only the most picturesque feature in the Western District, 
but one of the great sights of New South Wales. They are not the only limestone 
caves in the colony, as there are others at Wambeyan, Yarrangobilly, Wellington and 
Boree. All of these are not only remarkable for natural beauty, but are highly 
interesting to the geologist for their fossil remains. The Jenolan Caves, however, are 
the most remarkable, the best explored, and the most accessible. Formerly, though 



3o8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

erroneously, they were known as the Fish River Caves, but though close to the 
dividinij water-shed of that River, they are not in it. They lie in a valley which drains 
into the Cox, and so into the Nepean and Hawkesbury. 

Jenolan lies in a wide bend of the Great Western Railway, and so may be reached 
from several points from the line. It is actually nearest to Katoomba, but the track is 
over very rough bush-country. A coach-road from Mount Victoria leads to the top of the 
hill looking down into the valley. There are tracks also from Hartley and Rydal, but 
the usual travellers' route is from Tarana through Oberon. 

The Caves are in a limestone belt from two to four hundred yards wide — an old 
coral-reef. This belt runs right across the valley, but the creeks, instead of cutting 
through it, worked subterranean channels, and so carved out the tunnels and caves. 
The limestone is of the palaeozoic siluro-Devonian age, and the erosion of the present 
valleys took place chiefly during the pliocene tertiary epoch. 

As the visitor approaches the valley by any of the routes, he sees a great green 
mountain, covered at its base with grass, ferns and flowering shrubs, lightly-timbered on 
its crown, and generally free from protruding rocks. It is in no sense a rugged 
mountain, and seems set as in special contrast with the boulder-strewn slopes, the sheer 
crag-faces, the bastions, ramparts and pinnacles immediately around and below. Descending, 
all is stern and wild. Beauty of blossom and foliage vary the scene, but fail to clothe 
it. Any patch of soil there may be on the rocks bears mountain violets, buttercups — 
quaint golden knobs — and little star-shaped, daisies. In the crannies many varieties of 
fern are rooted, and where trees appear they are gnarled and knotted gums; or by the 
water's edge the dismal shea-oaks — the Australian whisper trees, whose presence and 
voice add a sentiment of weirdness to the rugged grandeur of the mountain landscape. 

The Caves explored are situated in a saddle between the two hills, from whose 
summits descend the Mount Victoria and Tarana Roads. Limestone is seen on the 
surface continuously for a distance of about five miles, but the underlying stratum has 
been proved by occasional outcrops for thirty miles, and is supposed to stretch far under- 
ground and appear again in the quarries at Marulan, on the Great Southern Railway Line. 
There are explored, and accessible to tourists, five great caves — " The Imperial " (with two 
branches), "The Cathedral," "The Nettle," "The Arch " and "The Elder." These subterra- 
nean halls are reached from two immense arches or grottoes piercing the mountain-saddle. 

The first of the Caves, " The Grand Arch," opens on the western side into the 
ravine where the cave-house and buildings are, and on the east into the gorge of the 
Mackewan Creek, • the subterranean river of the Caves. This has been hollowed out 
beneath gigantic fortress-like masses of rock. On the western side the entrance is com- 
paratively low, roughly resembling a Moorish arch, and is fifty feet wide at the base, 
and about thirty feet high. Excepting a narrow irregular space, through which the 
foliage of the gully beyond is seen, the inside is blocked by huge masses of fallen 
rock, past which a channel about fourteen feet in width gives access to the huge-domed 
interior and opens out the eastern entrance, which appears from within as an irregular 
triangle, with sides of about one hundred and twenty feet in length and a base of not 
less than two hundred feet. These sides are slightly arched — the angle at the crown 
appears almost perfect. The length across is four hundred and sixty feet, the top of 



THE JENOLAN CAVES. 



309 



the dome is seventy feet from the floor, the extreme width at the centre is two 
hundred feet. All along the southern side is an immense pile of fallen rocks ; on the 
right is one huge mass forty feet in length, twenty in height, and averaging twenty in 
thickness-^a portion of the outer edge of its summit distantly resembles a pulpit-rail, 
hence probably its name, " The Pulpit." Immediately behind " The Pulpit " is " The 
Organ," a shallow cavity in the wall of the cavern, where stalactites and stalagmites 
have met and formed a front resembling the pipes of an organ. Farther round are 
rock-faces from which the masses on the floor would seem to have been rent away by 
direct cleavage — not water-torn, but singularly weather-stained ; and the roof is a marvel ! 
All over it, all over the inner-arch of such a dome as would cap St. Peter's, immense 
masses of rock seem literally to hang. They resemble a drooping skirt of gigantic 




THE ARCH CAVE, LOOKING NORTH. 



garments, fossilized, turned into a dull gray stone, which, impregnated with iron and 
copper, has assumed mysterious tints and blends of dark red and green. Wherever an 
open space is left, it is quaintly mottled with mildew, and over all there is gloom, 
perpetual shadow, mystery, a sentiment of the nether world. It is the Hall of Eblis, 



3IO 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 




A PASSAGE IN THE CAVES. 



most truly, and just round the comer is " The Devil's Coach-house." Upon the eastern 
edge, within the arch, a flight of wooden steps leads to a vault-like entrance guarded by 
an iron gate. This gate the guide opens, and following him with candles lighted, 
visitors leave daylight and the outer world, and enter the realm of the gnomes. It is 
the double-branched " Imperial Cave." The first marvel discovered is a chamber, " The 

Wool-shed," some 
twenty feet broad and 
of a noble height, 
where particles of lime- 
stone, carried down by 
dripping water, have 
been deposited in 
shapes resembling 
fleeces — tiny fleeces 
shorn from the lambs 
of fairy-flocks, and huge 
fleece^ ample to swathe 
the limbs of Hercules, 
hung apparently on 
benches, drooping from 
ledges, or spread upon 
the floor, looking in 
the flickering light of the candles as soft as newly-shorn wool. "The Vestry" follows 
" The Wool-shed," and then, in what may be termed an alcove of the Cave, " The 
Architect's Studio." This is a large chamber whose walls are a dull gray, and about 
whose floor are many columns, indeed a double chamber, as is presently seen, for 
through a noble Gothic arch faint white lights gleam, which, in the glow of the 
magnesium wire, declare themselves as clustered stalagmites of infinitely varied form 
— an experiment, it might well be supposed, of some architect of the gnome world, 
and an effort which resulted in the perfections to be discovered later on. A hun- 
dred yards in from this " Studio," the narrow channel leads by walls, at times dripping 
wet and sparkling in every ray of light — at others dull, cold, gray and vault-like ; and 
occasionally strewing the floor are bones rapidly changing into beautiful specimens. A 
little farther in there is the " Margaretta Cave," with innumerable columns and curtains 
of marble and alabaster. "Helen's Cave" is similarly glorified, and sanctified moreover 
by the presence of a " Madonna " — not a perfect Madonna, or one carved by human 
hands, but a stalagmite left solitary — a column of dull white marble, weather-worn into 
a shape resembling the mother and child ; at times, no matter how dim be the light, 
the mother seems to wear a sun-bonnet. Still onward runs the narrow wa\-, and soon 
the " Lucinda " is found, of which it may be well to speak at length, in order to 
explain some terms which must be frequently used in future description. The " Lucinda 
Cave " is rich in " shawls ;" they hang from the roof and drape the walls, and enfold 
the alabaster columns of the great central formation, which would make the noblest, 
most beautiful reredos that ever adorned cathedral sanctuary. But these " shawls " are 




A SASSAFRAS GULLY ON TUE liLACK SPUR, 



THE J E NOLAN CAVES. 311 

not of the texture of any earthly loom. They are of purest marble and alabaster, 
tinted with solutions of the native ores of the hills. They droop from the rocks (being 
the results of slowly-dripping water they are never seen to project) from three inches 
to six feet in length, and from an eighth to a half an inch in thickness. If the light 
from the magnesium lamp be thrown behind them they are seen to be semi-transparent, 
to be of varit;d and delicate tints, of such whites and pinks as were seen in the lost 
terraces of New Zealand — such pale yellow, such apricot tones as are seldom seen else- 
where in the world ; and across them run bands of such deep orange, red and brown 
as Persian dyers love. These clothe the chamber of the " Lucinda," whose main object 
resembles a mighty altar-piece — semi-transparent snowy columns rising from rich gray 
bases of a substance resembling dull marble ; stalactites, drooping from a continuous 
mass of glistening white, approaching them ; pendants innumerable of many delicate 
tints; the dull and distant gray roof arched above, and all the floor bestrewn with crystals. 
Such is the utterly inadequate and certainly unexaggerated description of one grotto of 
the Caves — one of a hundred already explored, one of thousands lying away east and 
west beneath the grim outer garments of the far-extending hills. 

Beyond it lies " The Jewel Casket," a cavern of crystals and beautiful forms of 
pinnacle, spire and pendant in miniature ; and in the extremity, at the end of a mile of 
wonder-land, is " Katie's Bower," specially rich in " shawls " and most delicate furnishings. 
It is a half-day's work to explore it, and no day of all the year could be better filled 
than by traversing the right-hand branch which completes the " Imperial Cave." The 
guides (chief and master of whom is Jeremiah Wilson, explorer and opener up of all 
these caves) regard the right-hand branch of "The Imperial" as the richest treasure-house 
of all their realm ; and it is indeed a scene, or a continuance of scenes, of bewildering 
beaut)' — a succession of treasure-stores, of palaces, of fairy playgrounds, of most beau- 
tiful and sacred grottoes, of triumphs and trophies of fairy-work, hung upon the walls 
or buried in little chambers of the rocks ; of vast distances and lofty-domed retreats, 
where stand solitary snow-white columns, as if the builders and furnishers of the place 
had turned themselves to stone, that so they might dwell with and watch over their 
treasures for ever. Hard by the entrance to this Cave, and forty feet below its floor, 
flows "The Hidden River," only to be reached by the somewhat perilous descent of an iron 
ladder ; a little farther on is " The Crystal Rock," then another " shawl " cave, rich with 
an infinite variety of these beautiful creations. " The Confectioner's Shop " is a lengthy 
cavern, where stalactite and stalagmite, and encrustation on the walls, and crystallization 
on the floor, seem the realizations of all those ideas which confectioners strive to work 
out. This is indeed a homely illustration, and the " cates and comfits" of fairy-land must 
be imagined if the charm of the place is in any degree to be understood. Next, 
surrounded by shadow)- walls — where projecting rock-masses seem to take shape as armed 
knights ; where fragments above appear as eagles with spread wings, as Titanic hands 
lifted in menace or in warning, as veiled figures, as cloaked arms pointing inward-^the 
beautiful solitary stalagmite is reached which bears the name of " Lot's Wife," a lonely 
column, semi-transparent, whiter than any marble, upon a dark brown floor. 

" The Crystal Cities," down the next decline, would take many pages to describe, for 
how in a few words can we set forth the beauties of a space fifty yards in length 



3,2 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

and an average of four in breadth, crowded with results of crystallization and metallic 
colouring, infinite as the varied forms of water, from the filmiest summer cloud or the 
thinnest steam, to solid arctic ice! More spires here than Merlin gave to Camelot, 
more icicles than ever hung from any palace of the Neva ; and on the floor are terraced 
gardens of jewels, and in broad parterres, ranks of tiny stalagmites like armies of fairy 
fighting-men. What a contrast to pass from them all, and to see set upon a hill in a 
high-arched cavern beyond, another solitary white column, bearing the name of "Lot," looking 
back at his lost wife over all these treasures! A remark made here by one of Lot's 
wife's sex is not unworthy of record — " I am glad something has been done to ///;// at last." 

In a little cavern near by are a strange collection of crystals flashing like gems in 
the rays of the lamp— they are called " The Queen's Jewels." Down the main avenue 
are "Selina's Cave" and "The Josephine Grotto" — grand with huge column.s, festooned 
with " shawls," " curtains," and many-formed and many-tinted marble draperies, stalactites, 
cr>^stal-clear, snowy white, and of all the shades between transparent apricot and deep- 
toned terra cotta ; after which "The Mystery," a cavern set high in the wall, with spikes 
and spicules, with tiny columns and quaint figures in infinite variety — cast, spun, woven, 
hewn from plastic crystal and alabaster. Hardly is it passed when there come dazzling 
flashes from " The Diamond Wall," and beyond is seen the mystic " Bridal Veil," bearing 
an actual resemblance to a fall of lace sprinkled with tiny jewels. It is solid marble — 
marble that has actually flowed out of the heart of the hills — more handiwork of the 
gnomes, those marvellous earth-forces. How masterfully, yet how imperceptibly they toil ! 

"The Crystal Palace" and "The Garden Palace" are rich with radiant gems, with 
spires and pendants of all the hues with which cave experience makes us familiar, and 
" The Gem of the West " is held by the custodian to be also the gem of the Caves. 
This marvellous formation hangs somewhat as an orchid on a garden wall. It might 
well be imagined to have grown as a flower. A broad shell-like back, shaped some- 
what as the body of a stag-horn fern, projects about three feet, and terminates on its 
outer edge in a perfect semi-circle of transparent fringe. From its base droop crystal 
pendants transparent as ice, brilliant as diamonds, fine as threads of spun glass — some 
three feet in length and stout as the largest icicles, others three inches and as fine as 
needles. There was never a chandelier in any palace of the world to compare with it, 
never ornament or treasure manufactured by man's hand that would not seem insignifi- 
cant when placed beside it. It is beyond doubt a gem of the whole world — one of the 
treasures which a jealous Nature very rarely yields to mortal eyes. ' 

" The Fairy's Retreat " beyond, a cavern of crystals, a mile and a half from the 
entrance, is accepted for the present as the termination of this remarkable cave. 
Returning by way of the long wooden stairs and stepping out from "The Arch," the sweet- 
ness and light of the outer world are felt in the odour of countless snow-white blooms 
hanging in festoons from the verdant greenery of the Creek. They completely cover the 
heads of some of the tallest trees, and droop in long tendrils to the rich and varied 
fern-growth about the edge of the rapidly-flowing water ; for the Creek springs to light 
again here from its hidden currents in the Caves, and brawls along a merry half-mile to 
a bare rock-face fifteen feet in height. There, of course, is the fall — the gathered waters 
leap into a broad, deep pool below, making music which fills all the air around. 



THE JENOLAN CAVES. 



m 



Looking upward from the bed of the Creek through the roughky-piled rocks and the 
bright and varied foHage, a half of "The Carlotta Arch" is seen, and beyond, a flight 
of concrete steps on the high ground ahnost beneath the arch. This is the entrance to 
" The Nettle Cave," so called because of the abundance of nettles which in the old days 
grew about its entrance. It is a sad misnomer. "New Luxor," " Karnac," "The Basilica," 
"The Hall of the Kings," " Asgard," or "The Tombs of the Giants" would be more 
fitting, for all within 
is vast and grand, and 
it is as magnificent a 
contrast to the spark- 
ling beauties of " The 
Imperial " as a forest's 
mighty oak to a gar- 
den hyacinth. 

The "Nettle Caves" 
connect with "The 
Arch " ; the)' may be 
viewed and described 
as one. All their char- 
acteristics are the same; 
vastness, grandeur, 
colossal proportions 
everywhere — huge 
caverns upheld by 
gigantic columns, great 
shapes recumbent as of 
dead giants at rest, 
vaulted roofs a hun- 
dred feet aloft, and 

walls crowded with figures in which may be seen countless statuesque shapes of a soft, pure 
gray, like the interior of a mediaeval cathedral, or else green-stained through saturation with 
coppery solutions. On entering "The Nettle Cave" the first group met with is "The Com- 
pany of the Ancients " — five huge stalagmites worn and fretted away to poor stumps of 
their former magnificence, but still massive and picturesque. Only one, a little apart, stands 
erect and complete, fourteen feet in height and of proportionate bulk, somewhat kingly in 
attitude. A long hall is seen beyond — " The Ancient," with one perfect column, where 
stalactite and stalagmite have met, reaching from roof to floor. Once there were five, but 
an abominable vandalism, in the days when the Caves had no secure guard, broke down 
and destroyed four. One remains central in this long hall or corridor, whose smooth 
floor, thirty yards in length and ten in width, leads to a grotto named "The Sculptor's 
Studio," where, it might well be imagined, spirits who had wrought in building or 
decorating the dead cities of the Old World had suddenly ceased from their earlier toil, 
for these caverns and columns are older by untold ages than any cities the Old World 
knew. There are stalactites, marked by the keeper of the Caves, which have grown but 




THE BROKEN COLUMN, CATHEDRAL CAVE. 



,,4 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

three-quarters of an inch in eighteen years, and a learned professor, taking only a 
moderate-sized pendant and calculating from this basis, estimated that its growth must 
have occupied a period of two hundred and sixty-nine thousand years— so long has 
Nature been labouring in preparing this palace for our delight. It must not be supposed, 
however, that any such limit can be fixed to the term of the formation of the Caves. 
When the geologist looks closely into the limestone of which they are formed he 
discovers it to consist almost entirely of corals and shells, and thus he infers that the 
parent material of all the rock at one time lived and grew in the warm ocean. I'lie 
stillness of the central sea was once over all this caverned space, the coral-reef grew 
in the darkness of the unfathomed depths, and in the fulness of time was upheaved by 
the central forces of the world three thousand feet above the sea-level ; and through 
what enormous periods wrought by air and water, scooping out the great gorges, 
hollowing'- out the great caves ! Two hundred and sixty-nine thousand years represent 
but a moiety of the time occupied in their decoration, the building and the preparation 
of the material were all before. Well says the guide, pointing to a huge projection on 
the upper wall of " The Devil's Coach-house " (seen from " The Arch Cave "), whose 
crown is shaped as the head of an ancient, rugged and vast with Homer-like locks 
curling far down, " He was old there, before Adam was made." 

A great cavern, with a floor-space sixty feet by forty, in " The Arch Cave," bears 
the name of " The Ball-room," and around its walls are many very stately columns and 
stalactites of a perfect terra-cotta tint, all rich and chaste, and free from the slightest 
speck. The only trace of a crystal or transparent formation is in some half-exposed 
masses, knee and elbow shaped, a section of a trunk at times protruding, ringed as the 
back of a lobster, and in colour a pale malachite. They resemble the bodies of some 
monsters of an old world rising slowly from their burial-places. A sense of awe mingles 
with wonder as their shapes are fancied out, and a shudder of horror is hardly resisted 
as the warm human hand rests upon their clammy surface. 

Near to them is a cluster of huge many-domed formations named " The Willows," 
bearing a striking resemblance to willow-trees bowed down with snow — snow which in 
some mysterious manner has been transmuted into stone, whose surface has by some 
subsequent process of Nature been painted green, bright almost as the leaves of willow- 
trees. Far above "The Willows" is the pear-shaped opening on the roof of "The Devil's 
Coach-house " ; about its sides are some few traces of the outer w-orld — fern-leaves and 
tendrils of a delicate green. They break the spell of the enchantment bred by the 
spirit of the inner recesses. Turn again from the subdued daylight, look for a moment 
at the two grotesque masses which are supposed to resemble fighting-cocks. Look 
attentively, and one becomes an eagle with bent beak and talons rooted in its prey, 
suggestive of the Promethean legend. 

With lighted candles the guide leads past pillar, pinnacle and arch, by a narrow 
passage into a cavern where great clubs of rock hang from the roof. Let the lights be 
extinguished, and then in a darkness that may be felt, wait and listen ! Suddenly, 
startlingly, close to the ear, comes the boom of a deep-toned bell. Another and another, 
with higher, clearer tones — an actual chime rung. It strikes through the ear to the 
deepest wonder-chambers of the mind. It seems as if in the intense darkness the 



THE JENOLAN CAVES. 



315 



spirits of the Caves were tolling a knell for the mighty dead sepulchred around and below. 
But when lights are rekindled the sound is discovered to proceed from the clubs or 
mace-like stalactites, whose lower extremities are hollow, and when struck by a piece of 




THE EXHIBITION, CATHEDRAL CAVE. 



soft rock produce 
this peculiar effect. 
The largest and 
deepest-toned sends 
a boom along the 
c o r r i d o r 1 i k e t h e 
sound of the great bell of an English minster, heard across miles of woodland. 

Let " The Belfry " ring farewell to " The Arch Cave," and pass out beneath the 
mighty "Arch," where a great bough of a beautiful vine, white as jasmine and densely- 
flowered as banksia rose, swings by the cliff-wall almost to the iron grating of the 
entrance ; climl) then to the upper opening, and look through the long valley of 
Mackewan Creek, with its water-falls singing far below. ' From this point the valley 



3,6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

resembles a picture set in the frame of "The Arch." The walls are eighty feet in height, 
the breadth of the flat rock which joins them is thirty feet, and all along its edge 
droop stalactites, black against the blue sky. It is a very fitting entrance to such caves 
as are found below— a portal worthy of the sepulchres of the gods. 

With the intricate and delicate beauties of the "Imperial Caves" still in mind, but 
overshadowed by the colossal grandeur of those beneath the " Carlotta Arch," another 
vista in wonder-land opens out; this is the portico of the great "Cathedral Cave," which 
lies chiefly within the crown and about the southern side of " The Grand Arch." Imme- 
diately the iron gate is closed, the candles lit, and the descent begun, new chords of 
sensation are struck. Fairy-land and wonder-land have been seen before ; here Is vaulted 
gloom, suggestive of the tests to which all adventurers of fairy-lore were submitted 
before the triumph of their quest was achieved : 

Downward De Vaux through dubious ways 

And darksome vaults hath gone, 
Till issue from the wildering maze 

Or safe retreat seems none. 

Down flight after flight of damp steps winds the path, by dark dank walls, over 
grave-like floor-spaces, by rocks of mountainous bulk piled in weird confusion, an 
occasional bat" flitting across the gloom and vanishing into the darkness far overhead. 
After an eerie ten minutes of journeying, the magnesium wire is lit, and then the great 
nave of "The Cathedral" is fullv disclosed. Its dome towers aloft three hundred feet. 
Its greatest diameter is not less than two hundred. Its colours, as shown by the light, 
are all cold and gloomy, an occasional stalactite-formation of a warmer gray affording 
but scant relief. Still down goes the path, but not to a succession of glooms and 
dolours. A " shawl " cave is presently reached, but not of the proportions of those seen 
in " The Imperial." The shawls here trail from great walls, droop from the front of 
rocks like precipice edges, hang screen-like upon dark spaces, so perfect In every fold 
that a strange desire is felt to stretch a hand and draw them aside. One special 
curtain In this chamber should bear the name of " The Marble Screen." It hangs upon 
the left-hand wall, and is seen across a chasm about thirty feet wide. It is about eight 
feet in length by ten in breadth, and appears in the lamp-light to drape so exactly 
like long folds of white samite, that if the least breath of wind should blow one might 
expect to see a ripple of motion pass from fold to fold. It Is a screen that has never 
been withdrawn. Nature wove and hung It there, and still labours towards Its perfec- 
tion. When this cave of marble drapery Is left in darkness another great space opens 
which is called " The Exhibition " — a vast hall or vault of majestic desolation. The 
most prominent object Is " The Broken Column." A marble base, a marble cornice and 
capital above, enriched with those decorations which are of the order of Nature ; a shaft 
rising, a shaft descending — so Nature builds here, mocking all the art of man ; but the 
two will never meet, for on some great day of a far-away time the foundation of the 
stalagmite slipped forward just so much as to render completion forever impossible. 
One might Imagine that day saw a terrible havoc In these vaults, that some spirits had 
set about here to reproduce the glories of another world, that they had made marvellous 
progress with their work, but were suddenly arrested, condemned, overthrown ; all their 



THE JENOLAN CAVES. 



317 




THE DEVILS COACH-HOUSE, JE.NOLAN CAVES. 



o 



i8 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



co; 



mpleted work wrecked— all their plans confounded. For it is but the beauty of magni- 
ficent incompleteness which is seen in the marvellous formation right opposite to "The 
Broken Column." Marble columns and walls seem to have been begun with intent to 
support a canopy, the first lines of whose decoration had been carefully inwrought ; a 
few stalactites had been drooped as mortals hang tapestry, and for a hundred feet in 
len'^th the square front of the canopy of a great throne had been planned and left. 
The wreck, the chaos, the fragments of the mighty building are marvellously beautiful, 
but there is a sentiment of death, of stoppage, of obstruction in them all— a false senti- 
ment, for still the work proceeds, still stalactite and stalagmite descend and arise, still 
the marvellous textures of the "shawls" extend, the screens are perfected, and walls and 
domes and inner recesses clothed with an ever-increasing beauty. Downward from " The 
Exhibition," past tinted rocks reaching from ceiling to floor like cataracts, that tumbling 
down, in colour as the mane of a chestnut steed, had been turned to stone and 
crystallized and .sprinkled with powdered diamonds ; by monstrous columns, grotesque and 
grand and beautiful ; past little grottoes, each one a treasure-house, the path still leads ; 
and before making the ascent which leads to "The Music Hall" and " Lurline's Grotto," 
it is well to pause and look aloft and realize the magnitude of the tremendous dip of 
roof, which smooth and solid stretches as the segment of a little world high overhead. 
The portion seen by the rays of the lamp cannot be less than eight hundred feet in 
measurement, and so slight is the curve that it does not appear to contain more than 
three or four degrees of circumference. It slants downward as the smooth face of a 
tremendous cloud-bank, flattened, yet driven, by a growing wind. It is such a vault as 
might well be imagined beneath the greatest pyramid. But few visitors regard the roof 
or walls when the light begins to play about the glories of " Lurline's Grotto," the 
completed shrine where every pillar and column and frieze and cornice seem complete, 
where such work has been accomplished as was never seen about tlie kingliest tomb or 
the lordliest shrine of the world. It is as though alabaster and marble, and jacinth and 
chrysolite had been freely used. Everything is suffused with lovely semi-transparent 
colour. The iron and the copper are so intermixed with the crystal that the faintest 
and yet most perfect tints are produced ; no vein, or stain, or blot on them all. " The 
Music Gallery" is near to "Lurline's Grotto," another group of resonant stalactites, 
smaller than those of " The Belfry," and rather shrill than sweet or deep in tone. When 
these are passed a cavern yawns, across which an iron bridge has been swung near to 
the inner wall. Down the depths "The Hidden River" flows; a stone flung over 
the rail rebounds from rock to rock, and finally splashes in the still, clear waters. 
Beyond the bridge, in still deeper recesses of the cave, Nature has wrought fantastically ; 
there is a heap of " potatoes " — marble fragments rounded and encrusted with some brown 
substance like the outer skin of potatoes newly dug from the soil. Near by are " snow- 
balls" and "cauliflowers" — almost perfect images of these familiar shapes hanging to walls 
and ceilings, shown upon the floor — and last (so far as at present explored) in a little 
grotto beyond a narrow passage, a single massive stalagmite rises before a cranny in the 
rock-face through which is no possibility of entry, sparkling with an opal-like fire wher- 
ever touched by a moving light. This is called the end of the cave. Having seen it 
steps are retraced until an iron ladder is reached, which gives access b)- a short cut to 



THE JENOLAN CAVES. 



319 



the upper vaults of " The Cathedral," and thence by long flights of stone steps to the 
outer air. An oppressive burden of memories is gathered by a single visit to this great 
Cave — awful depth of gloom, vastness, incompleteness, chaos, scraps of beauty perfected 
amongst mountains of stupendous ruins. To write or to paint its full description would 

be as impossible as 
to tell the full tale 
of the pathos, the 
agony, the heroism, 
the martyrdom of 
the longest gallery 
of the catacombs 
of old Rome. "The 
Elder Cave," so 
called from a great 
and beautiful elder- 




THE WELLINGTON CAVES. 

tree overshadowing its well-like 
mouth, lies farthest north of all 
the Caves. Its interior is a terrible 
chaos of tumbled rocks and narrow 

tortuous passages, with only a few occasional patches of rare and delicate beauty. In 
its farthest and latest discovered chamber are some coral formations, springing branch- 
like from floor and walls. If found alone they would well repay a visit, but at Jenolan 
they are fairly outshone by the superior beauties immediately around. Last to be seen 
is " The Devil's Coach-house," another stupendous cavern cut beneath the limestone bar 
by the rush and ripple of the water of the Mackewan Creek. It is two hundred and 
seventy-five feet from roof to floor, five hundred feet from northern to southern entrance, 
four hundred feet in extreme breadth. A pear-shaped opening high in the roof admits 
daylight enough to shew marvels and mysteries on the walls and the pendants on the 



320 



A US TRALA SI A ILL US TEA TED. 



roof, grotesquely shaped and stained ; while in the full light that streams through the 
arched openings huge masses of marble are seen heaped on the floor, black as the crags 
of Sinai, with boulders of a dull blue or slate colour strewn about their bases. Some 
outer galleries of " The Arch " and " The Nettle " Caves, seen from the northern entrance 
high up, are to the right. It is a vast, a weird, an awful place, by no means ill-named 
by its early explorers ; such a place " Heme the Hunter," or " Lutzow, the Jager of the 
German Woods," would choose to tether his fire-fed steeds. It completes the circuit of 
the Caves as at present opened; is as appropriate a gate of departure as "The Grand 
Arch " is of entrance ; the outer door, if so the visitor choose, of such a temple of 
Nature as was never opened to mortal eyes in the world before : " And as yet," says 
the quaint and worthy keeper and explorer, " we are but at the beginning. By that 
rock (a half-mile away) is another cave-entrance, by that tree (high up on the cliff-side) 
is another into which we have but peered. In ' The Mammoth,' two miles awa), I was 
lowered down two hundred feet into a hollow vault where the biggest church of Sydney 
might have swung without touching any wall." 

How far the caves extend and what new beauties they may reveal are problems 
only to be solved by future exploration. They are with good reason supposed to extend 
through several leagues of country north and south of the spur in which those now 
opened are situated, and there are grounds for believing that they reach below the deepest 
levels yet explored. At greater depth it is also believed that stalactite and stalagmite 
and all the varied forms the limestone assumes, will be found more perfectly crystallized ; 
as in all the caves which have hitherto been opened — opaque formations lie near the 
surface, marbles and alabasters a little below, while deepest of all are the glassy and 
ice-like shapes which form the most intricate and delicate beauties of the Caves. The 
process of exploration is necessarily slow, as any new caves must lie more remote from 
the entrance, and the keeper can only give to the work the time not claimed by visitors. 
The Caves already made accessible have recently been illuminated by the electric-light, 
which imparts to them an added charm. 





Colonel William Collard Smith, M.P. 



AUTBED DeaKIN, M.P. 



THE DELEGATES FROM VICTORIA lO THE FEDERATION CONVEXTIOX, SYDNEY. iSgi. 



» 




THE " LAUV NELSON " ENTERING PUKT I'llILLIP. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



THE DISCOVERY OF PORT PHILLIP. 



^^ O far as we have any authentic Information to guide us we are bound to conclude 
*^-^ that the coast-Hne of what is now the colony of Victoria was first sighted by 
Captain Cook, as he was beating up from New Zealand towards the mysterious Continent 
spoken of by earlier navigators as the Great Terra Anstralis. It was on the morning 
of Thursday, the 19th of April, 1770, that his first-lieutenant made out a promontor)' 
supposed to be that now known as Cape Everard, but which then received the name 
of Point Hicks, in honour of the discoverer. Gabo Island and Cape Howe were noted 
on the evening of the same day. Twenty-seven years elapsed before anything more was 
seen or heard of the southern trend of the huge island which was believed to run 



322 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

down below the forty-third parallel. Then came the expedition of that gallant adventurer, 
George Bass, fully described in an earlier chapter of this work. He entered the inlet 
of Western Port on the 4th of January,. 1798; but after a stay of thirteen days there 
was compelled by stress of circumstances to retrace his course to Port Jackson. In a 
subsequent voyage he doubled Cape Grim, thus conclusively proving that Tasmania was 
an island, and proving also the existence of the strait which bears his name. But to 
Lieutenant Grant, of the brig Lady Nelson, belongs the honour of having discovered 
and defined the whole of the coast-line of Victoria from Cape Bridgewater to Cape 
Schank, and of having circumnavigated by way of Bass's Strait the south-east of 
Australia from the first-named Cape to Port Jackson, 

The annals of maritime adventure narrate few more gallant and successful exploits 
than that of the commander of the Lady Nelsoji. She was a small brig, fitted witli 
sliding keels, the recent invention of a Captain John Schank, a friend of Grant's, whose 
name has been commemorated in connection with a headland to the eastward of Port 
Phillip Heads. The little vessel had a crew of twelve men, and was provisioned for 
a voyage of nine months. Among sea-faring folk on the River Thames she had obtained 
the nickname of " His Majesty's tinder-box," and when she had taken her stores on 
board and shipped her four brass guns and ammunition, her gunwale was only two feet 
nine inches above the water-line. That such a craft would ever reach the other end of 
the globe was regarded by many people as a chimerical expectation, and these apprehen- 
sions communicated themselves to the crew, so that Lieutenant Grant had considerable 
difficulty in keeping them together. He had been commissioned by the Duke of Port- 
land, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to survey the south and south-west coasts of 
Australia, to examine the shores of Van Diemen's Land, to search for and determine 
the course of any rivers of importance that might exist, to report upon the soil, 
products and indigenous inhabitants of these regions, and to take possession in the 
King's name of such territory as it might be desirable to acquire in the interests of 
Great Britain. Grant sailed from Portsmouth on the 17th of March, 1800, put in at 
the Cape of Good Hope on the 8th of July, and did not depart thence until the 7th 
of October. At eight o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of December land loomed 
through the hot haze right ahead of the little craft, and a bold promontory, with a 
reef of rocks at its base, and two mountains behind it, the one peaked and the other 
table-topped, revealed themselves. Upon the headland he bestowed the name of Cape 
Northumberland, and the mountains he designated Gambier and Schank respectively. 
Shifting his course somewhat to the southward. Grant successively sighted and named 
Capes Banks, Bridgewater, Nelson and Solicitor, also Lawrence Island and Lady Julian's 
Island, both of them at the entrance of that half-protected bight which he called Port- 
land Bay. As he coasted along Grant was much struck by the beauty of the scenery, 
which he compared to that of Devonshire and the Isle of Wight, and he attempted to 
land a little to the westward of Apollo Bay, but failed to do so on account of the heavy 
surf. Cape Otway he had previously passed and named, and then, steering a point or 
two to the south of east, and disregarding the deep indentation of the coast to the 
northward, he sighted and named Cape Liptrap, and on the loth of December made an 
ineffectual effort to land on an island off Wilson's Promontory. Having sailed through 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



323 



the Strait, Grant reached Sydney on the i6th of that month. Thus the Lady Nelson was 
the first vessel to go "sounding on a dim and perilous way," along a route which is now 
traversed by a fleet of ocean and coasting steamers and merchantmen, laden with the pro- 
duce of all nations ; and compared with the magnitude and importance of her commander's 
achievements the exploits of Jason and his companions in the Argos when in search of 
the " Golden Fleece," or those more famed of Telemachus' sire, fade into insignificance. 

On the 8th of March, 1801, the Lady Nelson sailed from Port Jackson on a second 
exploring expedition, passing Wilson's Promontory on the 20th of that month. Grant 
saw and named Cape 
Paterson, entered 
Western Port, cleared 
and planted a garden 
upon Churchill's 
Island, and after sur- 
veying twenty miles of 
the coast between the 
inlet and Wilson's Pro- 
montory returned to 
Sydney on the 14th of 
May, 1801. Grant left 
Sydney for England, 
and was succeeded in 
the command of the 
Lady Nelson Ijy his 
chief officer, John 
Murray, who in the 
following December 
reaped the first Vic- 
torian harvest from the 
grain which had been 
sown by his predeces- 
sor. The little brig quitted Port Jackson on the 12th of November, 1801, and after visiting 
Western Port left there on the 5th of January, 1802, intending to explore the coast which 
trended to the north-westward. Beaten back by baffling winds, and unable to enter what 
appeared to be the inlet to an estuary, Murray sent round his first mate. Bower, with 
five seamen in a launch to examine this inlet. Rounding the promontory, which the 
Lieutenant designated Point Nepean, the launch was carried through "The Rip" on the ist 
of February, and the adventurous crew saw a great inland sea expand before them. 
They remained in it until the fourth of the same month, when they returned to the 
Lady Nelson to report the important discovery they had made. Eleven days later the 
brig herself sailed through the Heads. 

The natives on shore must have looked with mingled feelings of wonder and con- 
sternation on that strange apparition, shaped like a fish, but winged like a bird, which 
skimmed over the surface of the water, and contained within its capacious body a 




LIEUTEXAM-GOVKRNUK COLLINS. 



324 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

number of men with white skins and curious garments — men who were armed with long 
tubes which vomited fire and thunder, and could inflict sudden death upon creatures far 
beyond the reach of the black man's spear. Their dismay would have been still greater 
if they could have foreseen that the vision which met their gaze portended the ultimate 
extinction of their own race. 

Lieutenant Murray was charmed with the landscape scenery of the "noble harbour" 
he had entered, and compares it to that of Greenwich Park ami Blackheath, " the hills 
and valleys rising and falling with inexpressible elegance." On landing he saw numerous 
native huts, and several hundred acres of land which had been recently cleared by fire. 
Upon an island in the west channel, much affected by aquatic birds, he bestowed the 
name of Swan Island ; and to a lofty eminence on the eastern shores of the bay he 
gave the title of Arthur's Seat, from its resemblance to the massive hill which over- 
looks Edinburgh. Next day, the i6th, he saw some natives, with whom he and his party 
entered into friendly conference ; but in spite of the gifts made to them, and the con- 
ciliatory spirit exhibited by the new-comers, the blacks endeavoured on the day following 
to spear the white men, and the latter were obliged to discharge their guns at their 
assailants. Three weeks were spent in exploring the narrow peninsula off which the 
Lafty jVc/so>i was moored, and on the 9th of March Lieutenant Murra)' took formal 
possession of the country in the King's name, hoisting a flag on Point Patterson and 
discharging three volleys of small-arms and artillery. On the 1 2th the vessel ran 
through "The Rip" with the ebb of the tide, and regained the harbour of Port Jackson on 
the 24th. The last we hear of this stanch little vessel is that about the month of 
January, 1825, while trading in the waters of Torres Straits, she fell into the hands 
of the Malays, who massacred her crew and probably destroyed her. Certain it is she 
was never heard of afterwards. 

When Captain Flinders, after having skirted the south-vest coast of Victoria from 
Cape Bridgewater to Cape Otway, as described in a previous chapter, sailed through 
the Heads into Port Phillip, on the 27th of April, 1802, he was under the impression 
that it must be Western Port. He soon discovered his mistake, and found to his crreat 
surprise that the sheet of water was so extensive as to leave its northern boundaries 
indiscernible, even from a hill which he ascended for the purpose of ascertaining them. 
He visited and named it Indented Head, and crossing the western arm of the bay made 
for the isolated range which bears the native name of JJ'iirc/i }'ona)io;, conferring on its 
highest eminence, which he climbed, the title of Station Peak. He was much struck 
with the fine grazing capabilities of the country, but failed to discover any rills of fresh 
water, although there were three witiiin a few miles of Station Peak. 

Collins at Sorrento. 
Captain Flinders quitted Port Phillip for Port Jackson on the 3rd of May, and his 
report to Governor King was of such a favourable character that that functionary warmly 
urged upon the Duke of Portland the advantage and necessity of authorizing the forma- 
tion of a settlement at Port Phillip, partly on account of the fertility of the soil and 
the amenity of the climate, and partly to forestall the French, who contemplated a similar 
step — Captain Baudin, of Lc G^ographc, having explored portions of the Australian coast 



1 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



325 




with that object in view. Before Governor King could receive a reply from the Home 
Authorities he commissioned Surveyor-General Grimes and Lieutenant Charles Rohbins 
to walk round the harbour discovered by Lieutenant Murray and to report upon it. 
This was in December, 1802. In fulfillment of the duty thus imposed upon them, Mr. 
Grimes, as the leader of the expedition, discovered the River Yarra on the 30th of 
January, 1803, and ascended it as 
far as Dight's P'alls. The course of 
the Saltwater River was also traced 
from its outfall back to Keilor, but 
although Corio Bay was carefully 
circumambulated the party hugged 
its margin too closely to allow of 
their discovering either the Barwon 
or the Moorabool. Strange to say 
the report of the Surveyor-General 
was altogether condemnatory of the 
country as a place of settlement. 
The British Government, however, 
had meanwhile arrived at a different 
conclusion, and had issued instruc- 
tions, eight days after the discovery 
of the Yarra, to Lieutenant-Governor 
Collins to proceed to Port Phillip, 
or any part of the southern coast 
of New South Wales or the islands 
adjacent, and establish a settlement. 

there. The selection of that officer was unfortunate, for he appears to have come out to 
Australia with a foregone conclusion that his mission would prove an unsuccessful one. 
Collins sailed from England in the Calcictta, accompanied by the Ocean as a store-ship, on 
the 24th of April, 1803, having on board two hundred and ninety-nine male convicts, 
sixteen married women, a few settlers, and fifty men and petty otificers belonging to the 
Royal Marines. The Calcutta entered Port Phillip Heads on the i8th of October following 
and found that the Ocean had preceded her. A landing was effected at what is now 
Sorrento, and Lieutenant Tuckey, with two assistants, was dispatched in the Calcutids 
launch to survey the harbour, which occupied the party nine days. " The disadvantages of 
Port Phillip," and the unsuitability of the " bay itself, when viewed in a commercial light," 
for the purposes of a colonial establishment, were strongly dwelt upon by Collins in his 
despatches to the Admiralty, and he ventured to predict that the harbour would never 
be " resorted to by speculative men." Influenced by his representations Lord Hobart 
sent him instructions to break up the settlement and proceed to the River Derwent, in 
Van piemen's Land. These were cheerfully obeyed, and on the 27th of January, 1804, 
Collins quitted Port Philip in the Ocean. During the fifteen weeks which the expedi- 
tion had spent on shore there had been one birth, one marriage, and twenty-one deaths. 
The first white child born in Victoria saw the light on the 25th of November, 1803, 



•"■sg*. 




THOMAS HENTY. 



326 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



\:^m^ 



and received the name of William James Hobart Thorne. The first wedding took place 
on the 28th of that month, the contracting parties being Richard Garratt, a convict, and 
Hannah Har\'ey. a free woman; and the first death was that of John Skilhorne, a 
settler, on the loth of October. 

For twenty years the interior of Victoria remained 'untrodden by the foot of the 
white man, and the first to penetrate the virgin territory were Hamilton Hume, who 
was a native of New South Wales, and Captain Hovell. The former had previously 
distinguished himself as a good bush traveller-energetic, resolute and intrepid; and had 
been consulted in Sydney by Sir- Thomas Brisbane on the subject of an overland expedition 
to the south coast of New South Wales. With this Governor's approbation a party of 
eight men was organized for' that purpose by Mr. Hume, and a start was made on the 
3rd of October, 1824. Taking a south-westerly direction the explorers crossed the 
Murray on the 17th of November, and on the 24th discovered and named the Ovens 
River— after Major Ovens, who had been private secretary to Sir Thomas Brisbane; 

struck the head-waters 
of the Goulburn on 
the 3rd of December ; 
discovered King Parrot 
Creek on the 7th ; and 
reached the shores of 
Corio Bay, near the 
site of the present city 
of Geelong, on the i 7th 
of that month. They 
commenced their home- 
ward journey on the 
day following and ar- 
rived in safety at their 
starting-point near 
Lake George, on the 
1 8th of January, 1825. 
As there was some danger of the French founding a settlement in Western Port 
an expedition was dispatched thither from Sydney by Governor Darling, in December, 
1826, under the command of Captain P. R. Wetherall, of H.M.S. Fly, who was 
accompanied by Captain Wright, of the brig Dragon. Their reports were not unfavourable 
on the whole, but Captain Wright declared the situation to be unsuited to the forma- 
tion of a penal settlement, and the expedition was recalled. 





§1 




.flu 


XiS™**^ ^ ■ * ' 




k 





-■te 



henty's wool-store, the first building erected 
in victoria. 



The First Settlement — The Hentvs. 

Passing over Captain Sturt's exploration of the Murray, which belongs to the history of 
geographical discovery in Australia generally, we come to the first permanent settlement 
in Victoria by a little colony of Englishmen, who had previously tested and had been 
disappointed with the capabilities of Western Australia and Van Diemen's Land. These 
were the brothers Henty — Edward, Stephen, Frank and John — two of whom, Edward and 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



327 




< 



o 
2 



2 

H 
< 

n 



Stephen, landed in Portland Bay with farm-servants, live stock, agricultural implements, 
stores, and all the various necessaries for profitable occupation, on the 19th of Novem- 
ber, 1834; they became, by means of a flock of merino sheep which they had brought 



3,8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

with them from England, tlic pioneers of the great pastoral industry of the colony, 
just as. at a later period, they were foremost in commercial enterprise. 

The head of the family. Mr. Thomas Henty. who had been a banker and a landed 
proprietor in Sussex, came out to join his sons at Launceston, in Van Diemen's Land, 
after they had relinquished their project of settling in Western Australia, and he memo- 
rialized the Secretary of State for the Colonies for permission to purchase two thousand 
five hundred acres of land, at five. shillings an acre, between the parallels of one hundred 
and thirty-five degrees and one hundred and forty-five degrees of east longitude, on the 
south coast of Victoria; offering at the same time to relinquish his title to eighty 
thousand acres of land on the Swan River. But the application was refused ; and we 
learn from a subsequent memorial to the Governor of New South Wales, in 1840, that 
the Hentys had erected two considerable houses at Portland Bay, one of them containing 
twelve rooms, and two other substantial habitations at Merino Downs ; and had expended 
altogether between eight and ten thousand pounds in the construction of barns, stores, 
stables, work-shops, a dairy and other permanent improvements. 

By a remarkable coincidence the scene of this settlement was the precise point of 
the coast struck by Major, afterwards Sir Thomas, Mitchell, on his memorable journey 
overland from the Murray to the sea. That intrepid explorer, after having spent three 
months in examining the river-systems of what are now known as the Riverina and 
the Darling Districts, turned southward on the 20th of June, 1835, at the junction of 
the Loddon with the Murray. Ascending the banks of the former stream for three days 
he then lost it ; and bending his course to the westward he crossed the Avoca and the 
Wimmera, sighted the Grampians, and climbed to the summit of Mount William, over- 
looking thence a lovely panorama, combining such elements of grandeur, beauty and 
extent, such an interchange of solemn forests and far-stretching pastures of undulating downs 
and green valleys, of gleaming lakes and refreshing water-courses, as more than confirmed 
all the favourable impressions he had previously received from the country he had passed 
through, and justified him, as he conceived, in denominating this part of the Continent 
Australia Felix. Looking southward he saw few obstructions to the prosecution of his 
journey, and so he set his face in the direction of the sea. Passing Mount Arapiles, 
Mitchell reached a river bearing the native name of Nargula, on the 31st of July, and 
called it the Glenelg, after the Secretary of .State for the Colonies. He subsequently 
discovered the beautiful valley of the Wannon, lying to the eastward of the Glenelg ; 
and on the 20th of August Mitchell and his party came in sight of the sea, and found 
to their immense astonishment " a considerable farming establishment belonging to the 
Messrs. Henty," from whom the travellers met with a hospitable reception. We need 
not follow the energetic explorer on his homeward way. E^nough to say that he varied 
his route, crossing a gap in the Australian Pyrenees, and skirting the Great Dividing 
Range, he ascended Mount Macedon, in order that he might obtain a view of Port 
Phillip, passed over the site of the present town of Castlemaine, and reached the River 
Murray on the 1 7th of October. 

Speaking of the view from the summit of the mountain, upon which he bestowed 
the name it bears, Major Mitchell says, " I could trace no signs of life about this 
harbour {i.e.. Port Phillip). No stock-yards, cattle, nor even smoke, although at the 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



329 



highest northern point of the bay I saw a mass of white objects, which might have 
been either tents or vessels." Yet, fifteen months before, a settlement had been already 
effected near the shores of the Bay, and the foundations had been laid of the future city 
of Melbourne, and the capital of one of the most flourishing of the Australasian colonies. 

The Arrival of Batman. 

As early as the month of January, 1827, Messrs. J. T. Gellibrand and John Batman, 
of Launceston, Van Diemen's Land, solicited a grant of land at Western Port, with a 
view to establishing a pastoral settlement there ; but the application was curtly refused 
by Governor Darling, to whom it had been 
addressed. The project was allowed to slumber 
until the year 1835, when a vessel was char- 
tered at Launceston, and this same John Batman, 
accompanied by seven aborigines from Sydney, 
proceeded to Port Phillip, and landed there on 
the 26th of May. Palling in with some natives, 
Batman succeeded in disarming their fears and 
conciliating their confidence by numerous pre- 
sents and reiterated assurances of his pacific 
intentions ; the blacks he had brought with him 
acting as interpreters. He then asked to be 
conveyed to the chiefs of the tribe, with whom 
he spent four-and-twenty hours negotiating for 
the purchase of a tract of their country in order 
to stock it with sheep and cattle. The proposi- 
tion is alleged to have been agreeably received 
and cheerfully acquiesced in ; the boundaries of 
the land to be purchased were defined ; and on 
the day following Batman and the chiefs pro- 
ceeded to mark the trees at each an^le of the 
estate of half a million acres, which was to be 
conveyed to the purchaser in consideration of 
twenty pairs of blankets, thirty tomahawks, one 
hundred knives, fifty pairs of scissors, thirty 
looking-glasses, two hundred handkerchiefs, one 
hundred pounds of Hour and six shirts, to be 

paid down at once ; and an annual tribute of one hundred pairs of blankets, one hundred 
knives, one hundred tomahawks, fifty suits of clothing, fifty looking-glasses, fifty pairs of 
scissors and five tons of flour. A contract of sale was drawn up in due form on the 6th 
of June, 1835— the original document is in the Melbourne Public Librar> — and possession 
was given of this magnificent principality by the chiefs delivering to Batman a sod of earth, 
after which he returned to Launceston, leaving three white men and five of the Sydney 
natives to lay out a garden, and commence the erection of a house " near the harbour." 
A second conveyance had been executed, covering one hundred thousand acres of land 




WILLIAM BUCKLEY. 



330 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

belonjjing to a tribe named Iramoo and Gccloiig, professing to be the lords of an 
extensive domain encircling Corio Bay. Had these ambitious and overreaching transac- 
tions been carried through they would have conferred upon Batman and his fourteen 
associates — all of them, with one exception, residents in Launceston — boundless affluence ; 
for the value of the territory thus acquired can only be estimated at the present time 
by scores of millions sterling. This vast estate was to be divided into seventeen equal 
parts, two of which were to be awarded to Batman ; and the government of the new 
settlement was to be entrusted to Messrs. Charles Swanston, James Simpson and Joseph 
Tice Gellibrand, three of the partners in the enterprise, subject to a code of rules 
prepared for that purpose. Batman forwarded a detailed statement of his proceedings to 
Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, in Van Diemen's Land, who transmitted a copy of it, 
together with a draft of the conveyance, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 
That gentleman, however, declined to confirm the grant, but promised that the serious 
consideration of the Home Government should be given to the subject of forming a 
settlement in the vicinity of Port Phillip. Meanwhile, Mr. J. H. Wedge, one of 
Batman's partners in the undertaking, and formerly an officer in the Survey Department, 
had made an examination of the country surrounding Port Phillip, and had extended his 
investigations to a distance of from twenty-five to forty miles inland, laying down the 
various eminences, as well as the rivers and creeks, upon a chart. 

The Story of Bucklkv. 
In spite of the friendly relations which Batman believed he had established with the 
natives, some of them had concerted an attack upon the little party he had left behind 
him, and it was only frustrated by the interposition of a white man who had lived 
among them for a period of thirty-two years. This was William Buckley, the narrative of 
whose career constitutes one of the most romantic . episodes in the early history of 
Victoria. He was one of the convicts who had been landed from the Calcutta at Sorrento 
m 1803. and who had made his escape into the bush with two other men under sentence, 
both of whom are believed to have perished. He was a man of commanding stature- 
six feet five inches in height without his shoes— and to this circumstance probably, 
coupled with the belief that he was mtmrnong guurk—\\^2X is to say, a chieftain who had 
been killed in battle and had been resuscitated a white man— he owed his escape from 
death. He had been wandering about for a whole year, however, before he fell in with 
the natives; and the lonely cavern in which he is reported to have taken refuge at 
night is still pointed out as "Buckley's Cave." One of the blacks detected some immense 
foot-prints in a sand hummock near the outfall of the River Barwon, and following them 
up found the white stranger sunning himself upon the beach after a bath in the sea. 
An alarm was given, and Buckley presently found himself surrounded by the whole of 
the tribe. -Yon Kondak Baarwon?" asked one of the party. It was the name of a 
departed chief. The white man nodded and grunted assent. Other questions were put 
to him on the subject of his re-incarnation, all of which he fortunately replied to in the 
affirmative,, and he was forthwith admitted a member of the tribe, gradually learning 
their language and forgetting his own. They gave him a wife, but she preferred a 
lover of her own complexion, and she and her paramour were put to death in conse- 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



331 





BUCKLEY S CAVE. 



quencc. A second consort was bestowed upon him, bearing the name of Purrantnurnm 
Tallarwurnin, but he had no offspring by either wife. It was she, in her widowhood, 
who furnished the foregoing particulars of his discovery and adoption. She added that 
the children of the tribe always regarded him with awe as a mooroop, or spirit of the 
departed ; and that 
when vessels touched 
at the coast for wood 
and water Buckley 
avoided making him- 
self known to them. 
When a wreck occurred 
the white stranger and 
the other members of 
the tribe would acquire 
what salvage they 
could in the shape of 
blankets, axes and use- 
ful implements, in the 
employment of which 
Buckley taught them 
to become almost as 

expert as himself. So, without seeing the face or hearing the voice of a civilized 
being for upwards of thirty years, the bearded giant gradually lapsed into barbarism, 
conforming in all things to the habits of his associates ; sharing in their pastimes ; 
partaking of their food, and refraining only from the practice of cannibalism. When 
he learned that white men had landed in I^ort Phillip he also discovered that some 
of the natives, who had been threatened with punishment for stealing an axe, had 
resolved on spearing the Europeans. Blood is thicker than water, and Buckley deter- 
mined to prevent the attack and to obtain an interview with the strangers. He 
intimidated the blacks by representing to them the overpowering numbers of the whites, 
and he made a two days' journey for the purpose of discovering who the new-comers 
were. His majestic figure, bronzed by exposure to the weather, was rendered more 
imposing by his flowing hair, the great sweep of his beard, the growth of three- 
and-thirty years ; by the kangaroo-skin which enveloped his sinewy limbs, and by the 
native weapons which he carried. He sat himself down in grim silence, and affected to 
take no notice of the white men, who were puzzled alike by his features and his 
demeanour. But a closer scrutiny of the former left no doubt upon their minds that 
he was a European. To the questions which were addressed to him he could make no 
answer. All recollection of his mother-tongue seemed to have faded out of his mind ; 
nor was it until ten days afterwards that the secret cells of his memory began to be 
gradually unlocked, and the language of his childhood and of his early life came slowly 
back to him. He had escaped from the short-lived settlement at Sorrento on the 27th 
of December, 1803, and on the 28th of August, 1835, he experienced the gratification 
of receiving from Governor Arthur a free pardon, which occasioned so much delight and 



332 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

excitement to the recipient as to deprive him of the power of utterance for some time 
afterwards. It only remains to piece out the story of his life. Buckley was a native 
of Macclesfield, where he was born in 1780. He enlisted in the Cheshire Militia, and 
thence was drafted into the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, known as the King's Own. 
He appears to have taken part in the inglorious Walcheren expedition ; and was tried, 
convicted, and sentenced to transportation for having been concerned, it is said, in a 
mutiny at Gibraltar. After receiving his pardon Buckley rendered important assistance 
to Batman's party as an interpreter, and when Captain William Lonsdale was sent 
round from Sydney to the infant settlement with a small detachment of the very regi- 
ment to which " the wild white man " had formerly belonged, Buckley entered that 
officer's ser\'ice. But dissatisfied with the treatment he received, he quitted Port Phillip 
in 1837 and settled down in Van Diemen's Land, where Sir John F"ranklin, who was 
then Governor, provided him with suitable employment. There he married a widow with 
one daughter, but had no children of his own. In 1852 the Government of that 
colony bestowed a pension of twelve pounds per annum on Buckley, to which the 
Victorian Government added ten pounds, and he lived to be seventy-six years of age, 
his death having resulted from an accident on the 2nd of February, 1856. 

During his solitary wanderings Buckley had discovered a cavern on the sea- 
shore, in which the lonely fugitive took up his abode, subsisting upon shell-fish, 
and gradually acquiring those habits of taciturnity and reserve which clung to him 
for the rest of his life. Separated for something like a twelvemonth from all human 
intercourse his intellect became permanently enfeebled, and his organs of speech seemed 
to be partially atrophied by disuse. When discovered by the natives, in the manner 
described, he acquiesced with a dull resignation, if not a placid stupidity, in everything 
they assumed or proposed concerning him, whether by word or sign. Yet this very 
obtuseness of mind and stolidity of manner wrought with them in his favour, for they 
accepted both as the direct consequence and clear evidence of the transmigration of 
Kondak Baarzuoiis soul into the body of a white man, a process which, in their opinion, 
implied mental and physical degeneration. The first thing which roused him from his 
intellectual torpor was a feast, at which certain black men, killed in battle, were served 
up as the principal dishes. Against this his emotions and his appetite alike revolted, 
and he severed himself for a time from the tribe, taking with him two children — a 
blind boy and his sister — whom he had adopted. The latter married, and the former is 
said to have been murdered and eaten. Some time afterwards — for Buckley had lost all 
memory of dates, and the narrative of his life among the aborigines is a confused and 
confusing one — occurred his first marriage, and he appears to have deri\ed a grim satis- 
faction from the fact that the wife who deserted him was speared b)- a lover who had 
been violently incensed by the coquetry of the sable flirt. Twice only, during the 
lengthened period of his association with the blacks, did some faint prospect of escape 
present itself. On the first occasion an unknown vessel entered the Heads and anchored 
in Port Phillip. Most of the crew landed to obtain supplies of wood and water, and in 
their absence a number of natives swam to the ship and helped themselves to whatever 
portable articles they could lay their hands on. When the Europeans returned and 
discovered their loss they tripped their anchor and hastily departed. Buckley endea- 







GOVERNMENT HOUSE, MELBOURNE. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. m 

voured to attract their attention from the shore, but was probably mistaken for one of 
the marauders, and his signals were disregarded. On another occasion a boat was 
stranded in the harbour, and the two sailors who were in it were kindly treated by the 
natives of his own tribe, but were afterwards speared by those of the Yarra tribe. He 
had been also told by his black companions of a third vessel having entered Fort 
Phillip, of a boat-load of seamen having landed, and of two men having been tied to 
a tree and shot. But statements like these must be received with a certain amount of 
suspicion, owing to the clouded condition of Buckley's faculties ; the man who had lost 
the memory of his native tongue had naturally little recollection of past facts. Governor 
Bourke, who saw him in 1837, could extract nothing from him but a few monosyllables ; 
Captain Lonsdale was equally unsuccessful; Mr. J. P. Fawkner called him "a mindless 
lump of matter ; " and Mr. George Arden, who wrote the earliest pamphlet published in 
the colony (1840), tells us that "Buckley's extreme reserve rendered it almost impossible 
to learn anything from him of his past life, or of his acquaintance with the aborigines." 
The last glimpse we obtain of him is in Hobart Town, where his gigantic figure was 
to be seen almost daily "pacing along the middle of the road with his eyes vacantly 
fixed upon some object before him, never turning his head to either side or saluting a 
passer by ; and seeming as one not belonging to the world." 

John Pascoe Fawkner. 

While Batman was negotiating with the tribal chiefs for the acquisition of six 
hundred thousand acres of land on the northern and western shores of Port Phillip, 
another Launceston man, John Pascoe Fawkner, was organizing an expedition for the 
colonization of the same territory. It consisted of Captain Lancey, George Evans, 
Robert Hay Marr, W. Jackson, a blacksmith named James, and a ploughman named 
Wyse. Fawkner had been on board the Calcutta when Collins had made his abortive 
effort at a settlement, and therefore knew something of the harbour. He was an energetic 
little man, "whose life in low estate began;" who had fought his way up, and who had 
been called upon to " breast the blows of circumstance, and grapple with his evil star." 

Self-educated, self-reliant, and self-assertive, he possessed some excellent qualities for 
a pioneer ; and he lived to witness the obscure settlement he may claim to have founded 
on the banks of the Yarra, grow and ripen into a great city. He had chartered for 
his expedition the Enterprise, a fifty-ton schooner, trading from the port of Launceston. 
She dropped down the Tamar in the middle of July, 1835, but was detained by foul 
weather from putting to sea until the 4th of August. Fawkner was prevented by illness 
from accompanying the expedition, the command of which devolved upon Captain Lancey. 
After calling at Western Port the vessel entered the Heads on the ■i6th of August, and 
carefully feeling her way up the Bay she reached the mouth of the Yarra, and a boat 
was sent to explore that stream. It proceeded as far as the site of Melbourne, and 
having found a suitable landing-place, where the River widened into a spacious pool below 
a ledge of rocks which barred further progress at that spot, the Enterprise sailed up 
the Yarra on the 2gth, but mistaking the Saltwater River for the main channel, pursued 
a wrong course until the error was discovered and retrieved. On the day following, the 
vessel was moored on the north bank of the stream, immediately opposite the present 



334 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Customs House in Flinders Street. It was in the early spring, and the scene which 
presented itself to the eyes of the new-comers was a charming one. The land rose in 
a series of gentle undulations to the northward of the River, and was as lightly timbered 

as the pleasure-grounds of a country mansion in 
England. Freshened by the winter rains the 
green sward was vividly verdant ; and in the far 
distance ranges of purple mountains lifted their 
massive outlines to the north and east asjainst the 
stainless azure of the sky. The banks of the 
Yarra were fringed with feathery scrub, and the 




THE "ENTERPRISE, AND FAWKNER S 
HOUSE ON THE YARRA. 

stream itself, as yet untainted by 
the sewage of a populous city, 
glided downward to the sea in its 
pristine freshness and purity. It 
was evidently permanent, and there- 
fore the future settlement was 
assured of an abundant supply of 
one of its prime necessities. The 
Enterprise landed its cargo, con- 
sisting of horses and ploughs, pigs, dogs, farming implements, household furniture 
and blacksmith's materials ; tents were pitched ; five acres of land were broken up 
and sown with corn; fruit-trees and garden seeds were planted; and the little vessel 
was sent back to the settlement at Launceston for supplies of sheep and cattle. 



CAPTAIN Lonsdale's house. 



\ 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



335 



Hut in the meantime Batman's party — encamped at Indented Head — had seen the 
E7tterp7'isc as she cautiously crept up the Bay, and they hastened to warn the intruders 
off the soil, which had been conveyed to the Association. The new-comers disputed the 
title of their predecessors, and the latter, forsaking Indented Head, transferred their 
camp to an eminence, afterwards 
known as Batman's Hill, overlook- 
ing the spot of which Fawkner's 
party had taken possession. The 
Hill itself has long since been 
levelled in order to meet the re- 
quirements of the great railway 
station which now covers its site. 
Fawkner came over from Laun- 
ceston on the loth of October, 
1835, and shifted his quarters to 
the south side of the River, where 
the writer remembers to have seen 
the furrows of a corn-field upon a 
low-lying plot of ground at present 
occupied by manufactories and 
warehouses. Five hundred sheep 
and fifty head of cattle arrived 
from Launceston in the following 
month, and Mr. John Aitken, who 
had chartered the schooner Endca- 

votir at that port, brought with him a number of sheep, and proceeding in the direction 
of Mount Macedon, where a gap which he discovered perpetuates his name, he became 
the pioneer of the pastoral industry in that part of Victoria. 

In a map delineating Port Phillip Bay, which seems to have accompanied Batman's 
letter to Governor Arthur, immediately after the transaction of the former with the 
native chiefs, the applicant had marked out a large block of land embracing the whole 
of the area now covered by South Melbourne, Port Melbourne and Fisherman's Bend, 
as a reserve for a township and other purposes, while the marshy ground, which after- 
wards came to be known as Batman's Swamp, he purposed setting apart as a public 
common. But when the legality of the purchase of territory from the blacks was 
disallowed by the authorities in Van Diemen's Land and at Westminster, and the whole 
country was free for occupation, Fawkner, with superior judgment and foresight, chose 
the rising ground on the north side of the River as the more eligible site for the rudi- 
ments of a township. 

Batman, who had returned to Port Phillip from Launceston at the end of April, 
1836 — bringing with him his wife and family, Mr. James Simpson, who married his 
daughter, and the Rev. James Orton, a Wesleyan minister — fixed his residence on the 
hill which afterwards bore his name, opened a store there, and pastured a flock on the 
grassy slopes stretching thence to the hollow now known as Elizabeth Street, his shep- 




JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER. 



336 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



herd's hut being erected on the site now occupied by St. James's Cathedral. Soon 
afterwards Mr. James Sutherland arrived from Van Diemen's Land in the Francis Freeling, 
with eight hundred sheep, and formed a station in the neighbourhood of Geelong. 

By the middle of June the settlement on the banks of the Yarra had assumed 
sufficient cohesion and importance to justify its residents in taking some steps for 

organizing a form of govern- 
ment, or for establishing a 
tribunal empowered to settle 
any disputes which might 
arise among themselves. 
Accordingly a public meeting 
was held, attended by thirty- 
one persons, including 
Fawkner, Batman and 
Wedge ; and two resolutions 
were passed — one appointing 
Mr. James Simpson to arbi- 
trate between disputants on 
all questions excepting those 
relating to land, with power 
to name two assistants if he 
thought proper; and the 
other directing that a petition 
should be prepared, praying 
Governor Bourke to appoint 
a resident magistrate at Port 
Phillip. This request was 
complied with, and when Mr. 
George Stewart, ^ho had been designated to fill that office temporarily, arrived from 
Sydney, he found that one hundred and seventy-seven persons from Van Diemen's 
Land had settled in the district, and were possessed of live stock and other property 
to the value of one hundred and ten thousand pounds. During the remainder of the 
year 1836 the settlement continued to receive numerous accessions to its population, 
and large numbers of sheep and cattle. During this year the first funeral in the 
settlement — that of a child named Goodman — took place on Flagstaff Hill. 




LORD MELBOURNE. 



Captain Lonsdale. 

On the 29th of September the Rattlesnake, Captain Hobson, arrived in the Bay, 
bringing Captain Lonsdale, who was afterwards to act as resident magistrate. The 
harbour was thoroughly surveyed by the commander of the Rattlesnake, and it received 
his name in consequence ; one of his lieutenants gallantly bestowing upon Mounts 
Martha and Eliza the epithets they bear, in honour of Mrs. Lonsdale and Mrs. Batman 
respectively. A survey was soon afterwards made by Mr. Russell and his assistants of 
the site of" the present city of Melbourne, a spot which was sometimes spoken of as 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



337 



Bearbrass, and sometimes as Dtitergalla, its native name. When a census was taken on 
the 8th of November, 1836, the population of Port PhilUp was found to number one 
hundred and eighty-six males and thirty-eight females ; while the aborigines within a 
circuit of thirty miles around the settlement were ascertained to consist of seven hundred 
men, women and children. They composed three tribes — the Wawoorongs, the Boonoorongs 
and the Watotirongs. It was with the last-named tribe that Buckley became affiliated, when 
he effected his escape from the Calcutta during Collins's stay at Sorrento. 

The year 1836 was memorable in other respects. Not only had the pioneers of 
settlement signified their desire for orderly rule and self-government, but they had taken 
steps to secure for themselves the ministrations of religion, and Divine service was cele- 
brated for the first time under a group of trees upon the slope of Batman's Hill, in 
the month of April, by the Wesleyan minister previously referred to. Nor were the 
spiritual wants of the natives overlooked, for Mr. George Langhorne was entrusted with 
the charge of a missionary station which was established on the site of the present 
Botanical Gardens, and Mr. John Thomas Smith, subsequently celebrated as the 
" Australian Whittington," acted as his assistant. In Mr. Arden's pamphlet some authentic 
particulars are given of the appearance of the little township at this date :— " In the six 
months which had elapsed since the close of the preceding year (1835), the settlement 
had assumed the appearance of a village, several buildings, although of rude construction, 
having been erected ; of these 
many had their plot of ground 
attached. A blacksmith's forge was 
at work ; soil fit for the manufac- 
ture of bricks had been discovered 
and experimentally tried, and up- 
wards of fifty acres of rich light 
black loam had been brought into 
general cultivation." A public- 
house erected and occupied by 
Fawkner in Collins Street West, 
near the corner of what is now 
Market Street, may be regarded as 
the core and centre of the infant 
settlement, which spread thence in 
an easterly direction. The cot- 
tages, constructed for the most part 
of wattle-and-dab, were few and far 
between, the thoroughfares were 
mere bush-tracks, and the rising 
ground eastward of Swanston 

Street was a sylvan wilderness. During the rainy season a turbulent creek flowed down 
the valley, now marked by the alignment of Elizabeth Street, which separates the two 
divisions of the present city ; and the blacks came in and camped and held corroborrees 
upon sites now occupied by some of the most important buildings in Melbourne, 




CAPTAIN LONSDALE. 



JJ 



8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



In March, 1S37, the first flock of sheep brought overland from New South Wales 
reached the shores of Port Phillip, and it may be interesting to note that the first 
sheep-shearing commenced on the 9th of November, 1836, opposite the present race- 
course. On the 4th of March the settlement received a visit from Sir Richard Bourke, 
who occupied an encampment at the western extremity of the street which bears his 
name. Not long after his arrival he experienced a somewhat strong shock of earthquake, 
which occasioned some misgivings in his mind as to the expediency of laying out a 
town in such a locality. But, as the shock was not repeated, Mr. Hoddle was instructed 
to proceed with the survey. By some happy inspiration he gave a width of ninety-nine- 
feet to the principal streets, but in deference to the wishes of Sir Richard I^ourke he 
made provision for some narrow lanes, to be called mews, intending them as entrances 
to the gardens. in the rear of the houses in the main streets. Upon the town itself 
was bestowed the name of the English Premier of the day ; the thoroughfares running 
east and west receiving their titles in honour of Captain Flinders, Lieutenant-Governor 
Collins, Sir Richard Bourke and Captain Lonsdale. That the principal street in the 
city should have been called after an officer by whom the settlement of Port Phillip 
was so emphatically condemned is another example of the irony of fate. Williamstown 
and Geelong were also laid out, the former bearing the name of the reigning sovereign, 
while the latter is a corruption of the native name Jillong. On the 30th of April the 
first child born in the settlement was baptized by the name of John Melbourne Gilbert ; 
and on the ist of June the first land sale held in Melbourne took place, Mr. Robert 
Hoddle, the surveyor in charge of the district, performing the duties of auctioneer. The 
average price obtained was thirty-five pounds the half-acre allotment ; but five months 
later, when a second land sale was held, the price averaged forty-two pounds for the 
same area. During his stay in the infant settlement Sir Richard Bourke made two 
excursions into the interior of the country, visiting Mount Macedon and Geelong, 
bestowing upon the latter the name by which the locality had previously been known 
among the natives. In the same year the first steamer, the James Jl'att, entered 
Hobson's Bay from Sydney ; and on the 30th of December an overland mail was 
established between that city and Melbourne ; an intrepid stock-rider named John liourke 
undertaking to carry it on horseback from Yass to Port Phillip. Some tragic incidents 
darkened the annals of 1836. Two of the first settlers, Messrs. Gellibrand and Hesse, 
endeavoured to explore the Cape Otway Ranges and were never again heard of ; but 
long afterwards a skeleton was discovered which was identified as that of Mr. Gellibrand, 
from the gold-stopping of one of the teeth in the skull. A bushranger named Cummer- 
ford confessed to having, in concert with two accomplices, murdered six bushrangers 
while they were a.sleep, on the track between Melbourne and Portland Bay. A police- 
sergeant, two constables and a soldier were directed to accompany him to the scene of 
the crime for the purpose of verifying his statements. On arrival there they found 
neariy two bushels of calcined bones, besides various relics of the murdered men. On 
their way homeward one of the constables and the soldier turned back for some tea 
which had been left behind, and whilst the .sergeant was making a fire, Cummerford 
seized his musket, and shooting the remaining constable dead, made his escape into the 
bush, where he baffled the ineffectual pursuit of the sergeant. Two days afterwards. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 339 

however, this miscreant was captured while attempting to steal a horse, and met at 
the hands of the law with the punishment which he had so richly merited. 

In the early part of 1838 Messrs. Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney, with a 
party of nine men, started on an overland expedition with cattle from a station on the 
Murray for Adelaide, discovering and naming en route Lakes Victoria and Bonney, and 
after a journey of upwards of three months reached their destination on the 30th of 
April. At the beginning of the year Fawkner had commenced the issue of a weekly 
newspaper in manuscript entitled the Melbourne Advertiser, which the frequenters of the 
hotel were privileged to read ; and in the following March the arrival of a hand-press 
and some type from Launceston enabled him to produce a printed journal. This was 
styled the Melbourne Daily Neius and Port Phillip Patriot, and was edited for a time 
by a brother of Mr. Boucicault, the dramatist. A rival sprang up six months later in 
the Port Phillip Gazette, edited by Mr. Arden. 

Life was still very insecure in the pastoral districts of the settlement, and on the 
iith of April, 1838, as a party of fifteen men, in charge of travelling stock, were 
crossing the country from the Broken River to Goulburn, they were attacked in over- 
whelming numbers by the natives, and eight of the Europeans were killed by the spears 
of their assailants, and most of the others wounded. 

Two branches of Sydney banks were established in Melbourne ; the Port Phillip 
Bank was likewise instituted ; the first Post Office was opened in a small brick building 
somewhat to the westward of what is now Temple Court ; a mail-cart began to travel 
between Melbourne and Geelong ; the aborigines were placed under the protection of 
Government officers ; the first Roman Catholic clergyman and the first Presbyterian 
minister arrived in Melbourne ; Mr. Peter Snodgrass was appointed Commissioner of 
Crown I^ands for the Port Phillip District, and the price was raised from five to twelve 
shillings an acre ; a general fast was observed on account of a prolonged drought ; the 
Melbourne Club was instituted ; the barque Hope arrived from Sydney bringing about 
two hundred immigrants, and Captain Lonsdale, on the ist of January, 1839, began to 
exercise the functions of police magistrate. By this time the incoherent settlement had 
assumed the character of a definite organism, and was already nearly ripe for a 
corporate existence. 

Governor Latrobe. 
On the 4th of February, 1839, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 
saw fit to appoint Mr. Charles Joseph Latrobe Superintendent of the district of Port 
Phillip, an office carrying with it the authority and functions of a Lieutenant-Governor. 
Mr. Latrobe was the son of a Moravian minister, and had acquired the reputation of 
being an amialjle man of studious habits and philanthropic principles ; and it seems to 
have been considered, that having previously identified himself with the cause of negro 
emancipation in the West Lulies, he was eminently well calculated to look after the 
temporal and spiritual interests of the aborigines in the south-east of Australia. He 
arrived with his family in the Pyrenees on the 2nd of October, 1839, and shortly after- 
wards erected, on a gentle eminence eastward of the city, upon which he bestowed the 
name of Jolimont, a wooden house he had brought with him from England. In later 



340 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



years, when a more suitable residence was provided for him, JoHmont was tenanted by 
the Protestant Bishop of Melbourne. The pleasure-grounds surrounding the house have 
been since subdivided, and are now covered by a populous suburb. 

Captain Lonsdale was appointed secretary to Mr. Latrobe, and also sub-treasurer at 
Melbourne, and it was considered necessary for the more effectual administration of 
justice to station a resident judge at Port Phillip. Mr. Justice Wills was selected for 
that purpose, and the choice proved to be an unfortunate one, for he was afterwards 
removed on account of infirmities of temper, exhibited on the bench. During the month 
of May, 1839, the pioneer settler, John Batman, was gathered to his fathers. A simple 
obelisk of dressed bluestone was erected to his memory in the year 1881. It stands in 
the old Melbourne Cemetery — a place of burial which is now no longer used. 

By the end of the year 1840 Governor Gipps was enabled to report to the Colonial 
Office that villages had been laid out along the road from Sydney to Melbourne, that 
police stations had been formed, and that the route between the two places was as safe and 
as easily traversed as any other in New South Wales. The large and fertile province of 
Gippsland was discovered and partially explored by Angus McMillan, who started on the 
nth of January, 1840, from a station near the Snowy Mountains, accompanied by a stock- 
rider and a native, and penetrated to within sixty miles of Wilson's Promontory. On 
his return he met Count Strzlecki, who was setting out on a similar expedition. That 

gentleman ascended the Murray to its sources in 
the Australian Alps, discovered and named Mount 
Kosciusko, travelled thence in a south-westerly 
direction to Mount Tambo and the Omeo District ; 
crossed the Great Dividing Range, and heading for 
Western Port passed over and named eight large 
rivers ; was compelled to abandon his horses, which 
were exhausted ; and, after undergoing the severest 
hardships and privations, succeeded in opening up a 
magnificent country, covering an area of five thou- 
sand six hundred square miles, with two thousand 
square miles of coast range and two hundred and 
fifty miles of sea-board, rich in natural resources, 
remarkable for its picturesqueness and fertility, and 
capable of supporting a population of several mil- 
lions. It only remains to add — by way of com- 
pleting the record of Victorian exploration — that 
in 1854 Dr. Baron Ferdinand von Mueller sup- 
plemented the important discoveries in the moun- 
tainous country to the northward of the Great 
Dividing Range by the ascent of Mount Wel- 
lington, by exploring the sources of the Mitta Mitta River, and by scaling the two highest 
peaks of the Bogong Range, which he named Mounts Hotham and Latrobe respectively. 
By an Act of the Imperial Parliament passed in 1842 the inhabitants of Port Phillip 
were empowered to send six representatives to the Legislative Council of New South 




BATMAiN S MONUMENT. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



341 



Wales, and in the same year municipal government was bestowed upon Melbourne. Mr, 
Henry Condell was the first Mayor of the town, and he was also chosen to represent 
it in Sydney, while Mr. C. H. Ebden and Dr. Alexander Thomson, settlers in Tort 
Phillip; the Rev. Dr. Lang, Dr. (now Sir Charles) Nicholson, and Mr. Thomas Walker, 
all then of Sydney, were 
elected by the voters outside 
the metropolis of the district. 
Some time previously an agita- 
tion had arisen among the 
people of Port Phillip for 
separation from New South 
Wales, and expression was 
given to this feeling by Dr. 
Lang, who moved a resolution 
affirming its necessity in the 
Legislative Council on the 
20th of August, 1844. It was 
negatived, however, by more 
than three to one, and the 
debate upon it was rendered 
somewhat remarkable by a 
speech from the present Lord 
Sherbrooke, in which he de- 
clared his belief that the time 
would come when the mother- 
country would " knit herself 
and her colonies into one 
mighty confederacy, girdling 
the earth in its whole circum- 
ference, and confident against 
the world in art and arms." 

Sedulously bent upon attaining separation, the electors of Melbourne, having occasion soon 
afterwards to choose a fresh representative, selected Earl Grey, the Secretary for the 
Colonies, and this argumentitm ad absurdum probably contributed to bring about the 
desired object. By way of preparation for it, Her Majesty allowed the settlement 
to substitute her own name for that of Port Phillip, and on the 5th of August, 1850, 
an Imperial Enactment erected the district into a separate colony, Mr. Latrobe, the 
Superintendent of the district of Port Phillip, being appointed its first Governor. 

During his term of of^ce two events occurred which rendered the period memorable 
m the history of the colony. The first was a calamity which created wide-spread conster- 
nation and suffering, while the second filled the whole civilized world with magnified 
reports of its actual marvels. The year 1850 had been one of exceptional heat and 
drought. Pastures had withered ; creeks had become fissured clay-pans ; water-holes had 
disappeared ; sheep and cattle had perished in great numbers, and the sun-burnt plains 




GOVERNOR LATROBE. 



342 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

were strewn with their bleached skeletons; the very leaves upon the trees crackled in 
the heat and appeared to be as inflammable as tinder. As the summer advanced the 
temperature became torrid, and on the morning of the 6th of February, 1851, the air 
which blew down from the north resembled the breath of a furnace. A fierce wind 
arose, gathering strength and velocity from hour to hour, until about noon it blew with 
the violence of a tornado. By some inexplicable means it wrapped the whole countr)' 
in a sheet of flame — fierce, awful and irresistible. Men, women and children, sheep and 
cattle, birds and snakes fled before the fire in a common panic. The air was darkened 
by volumes of smoke, relieved by showers of sparks ; the forests were ablaze, and on 
the ranges the conflagration transformed their wooded slopes into appalling masses of 
incandescent columns and arches. Farm-houses, fences, crops, orchards, gardens, hay-stacks, 
bridges, wool-sheds, were swept away by the impetuous onrush of the flames which left 
behind them nothing but a charred heap of ruins, and a scene of pitiable desolation. 
The human fugitives fled to water, wherever it could be found, and stood in it, 
breathing with difliculty the suffocating atmosphere, and listening with awe to the roar 
of the elements and the cries of the affrighted animals. Many lives were lost, and the 
value of the property and live stock destroyed on " Black Thursday " can only be 
vaguely conjectured. I^ate in the evening a strong sea-breeze began to blow, driving 
back the heavy pall of smoke that had deepened the darkness of the night, and the 
next day dawned upon blackened homesteads, smouldering forests, charred carcases of 
sheep, oxen, horses, poultry, and wild animals, and the face of the country presented such 
an aspect of ruin and devastation as could never be effaced from the recollection of 
those wiio had witnessed and survived the calamity. 

The Discovery of Golu. 

Four months afterwards men's minds were stirred by an excitement of another kind. 
It was announced in the columns of the Poi'i Phillip Gazette that gold had been 
discovered in the Plenty Ranges, at no great distance from Melbourne ; and on the 
loth of June, 1851, Mr. William Campbell, a settler on the Loddon, found some specks 
of gold in quartz upon the station of Mr. Donald Cameron, at Clunes. The news 
spread, and hundreds of eager eyes were soon searching for traces of the precious 
metal in all the settled districts of the colony. The simultaneousness and magnitude of 
the discoveries were perfectly startling. It seemed as if the richest " pockets," the 
heaviest nuggets, and the most precious " wash-dirt," had been deposited by a bounteous 
Nature so near the surface, that nothing was necessary to get at the gold but the 
simplest appliances and the labour of a few days, and, in some instances, of only a few 
hours. At Clunes, at Buninyong, at Ballarat, and near most of the creeks in the 
valley of the Loddon, men were congregated by hundreds and by thousands. Melbourne 
was deserted, and so were the country townships, the sheep-farms and the cattle-stations. 
" The sacred thirst for gold " seized upon all classes, and its acquisition levelled all distinc- 
tions. Who could be expected to pursue the ordinary occupations of industry, when, by 
sinking a hole in the earth for a few feet, he might come upon an old river-bed 
glittering with golden sand, or find a " jeweller's shop," packed with nuggets as large 
as potatoes, or discover a solid mass of the precious metal, too heavy to be lifted by 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



343 



one pair of arms ? The public service was deserted ; the guardians of the peace disap- 
peared ; and male and female domestics helped to swell the general stampede. Society 
was not merely disorganized, it was dissolved ; and the position of the unfortunate 
Governor was one of unprecedented embarrassment. Something like eleven thousand 




" BLACK THURSDAY. 

people poured into Victoria from South Australia and from Van Diemen's Land, without 
reckoning those who crossed the Murray from New South Wales in the second half of 
1 85 1. The scenes witnessed on the roads to the principal diggings were of the most 
animated character. Every gold-seeker was inspired by a feverish hope ; and, in many 
instances, his most sanguine expectations were far surpassed. 

Before the end of December, upwards of ten tons of gold had been obtained from 
the Victorian gold-fields, and the supply appeared to be inexhaustible, so that no sooner 
did the news of these extraordinary discoveries reach Europe and America, than a great 
tide of population began to flow outward, in the direction of the new land of Ophir. 
Upwards of fifteen thousand immigrants arrived by sea during the latter part of 1851, 
ninety-four thousand in the year following, and nearly a quarter of a million in 1853-4-5. 
Week after week vessels continued to arrive in Hobson's Bay, landing passengers and 
discharging cargo as they best could, for they were usually deserted by their crews as 
soon as they dropped anchor. There was no accommodation for a fiftieth part of the 
new arrivals in Mell^ourne ; so an encampment, as large as an extensive village, sprang 
up on the south side of the Yarra, which became known as Canvas Town, and there, 
men, women and children — those who had been gently born and gently nurtured, and 
those who had been familiar with a rough life in old countries ; professional men, 
artisans, husbandmen from rural England, fugitives from justice in California, political 
refugees from France and from Germany, escaped convicts from the other side of the 
Strait, and people who had quitted the mother-country with visions of becoming suddenly 



544 



A USl^RALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



rich upon the Victorian gold-fields — all these were forced into a strange companionship, 
and were depressed to the same social level by the force of untoward circumstances. At 
the same time a horde of Asiatics descended on the colony from the Straits Settlentents 
and from Canton ; and not less than twenty-five thousand Chinamen were allured to the 
gold-fields by the widely-spread rumours of their richness. 

For a period of ten years the yield of the precious metal was enormous, but it 
reached its max/mum only two years after its discovery, when no less than twelve 
million six hundred thousand pounds' worth was taken from the soil in the space of 
twelve months; while the value of the gold raised from 1852 to i860 inclusive was 
upwards of ninety-five millions sterling, the population of the colony in the latter year being 
a little over half a million. All the splendid prizes in the captivating lottery of gold- 
digging were discovered in the early days. The first large nugget, .weighing one thousand 
six hundred and twenty ounces, was unearthed in Canadian Gully, Ballarat, in February, 
1853, and was surpassed in weight by another found on Bakery Hill, in the same district, 
in June, 1858. This turned the scale at two thousand two hundred and seventeen ounces; 
while the heaviest ever found was procured at Mount Moliagul, in the Dunolly District, in 
February, 1869; for this weighed two thousand two hundred and eighty ounces. Men mining 
on Golden Point, Ballarat, were known to be making as much as from three hundred to 
four hundred pounds sterling per day each ; and Governor Latrobe, who visited this spot 
in 1 85 1, mentions that he saw eight pounds' weight of gold washed from two tin dishes of 









EN ROUTE FOR THE DIGGINGS. 
Adapted from a sketch bu F. Gill. 



dirt, and heard of a party that had raised sixteen pounds at an early hour of that day, 
and had succeeded in obtaining thirty-one pounds before night-fall. But there were many 
blanks, and numbers of disappointed diggers betook themselves to their former employ- 
ments, at which they found they could earn from a pound to twenty-five shillings per 
day. Not a few turned carters, for as much as one hundred pounds sterling per ton was 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE VICTORIA. 



345 



paid for the transport of stores from the sea-port to the principal gold-fields; and it is 
recorded that one publican, owning or controlling as many as a hundred and twenty-two 
public-houses, or " shanties," disbursed no less than one thousand five hundred pounds 
sterling a week for cartage, during seven consecutive months of 1853. The criminal 
element in the population, com- 
posed chiefly of convicts who 
had escaped from Van Die- 
men's Land, became a source 
of danger and depredation to 
the ccmimunity. On the 2nd 
of April, 1852, a gang of these 
desperadoes boarded the Nel- 
son, lying in Hobson's Bay, 
and succeeded in carrying off 
gold-dust to the value of 
twenty-four thousand pounds ; 
escorts were robbed on their 
way down from the gold-fields 
to Melbourne, and life and 
property became so insecure 
that diggers slept, and moved 
about from place to place, with 
loaded revolvers by their side. 

Mr. Latrobe was succeeded 
as Governor by Sir Charles 
Hotham, who arrived in Mel- 
bourne on the 21st of June, 
1854, and inherited a legacy 
of troubles left by his pre- 
decessor. The separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales had been attended 
by the creation of a Legislative Council, composed of ten nominee and twenty elected 
Members. But among the latter there were no representatives of the great mass,, of the 
population concentrated on the gold-fields. One of the first acts of this body was to 
impose a license fee of thirty shillings per month — which was raised for a time to sixty 
shillings — on every person searching for gold. The license was not transferable ; it was 
available for use only within half a mile of the police camp from which it had been 
issued, and it had to be produced whenever demanded by a police ofiicer. This was the 
most irritating circumstance connected with the license, for digger-hunting became a 
popular pastime with the young cadets who wore the Government uniform, and was often 
practised with a harshness and t)ranny which were altogether indefensible. Every digger 
who had neglected to procure or to renew, or who had lost or mislaid, his license, was 
liable to be apprehended ; and it was no uncommon spectacle to see fifty or sixty men 
handcuffed together like so many felons and dragged to the camp, there to be fined 
or otherwise dealt with. An agitation for the suppression of this impost — which was 




A HUT AND A STOKE AT THE DIGGINGS. 
Adapted from a sketch by F. Gill, 



346 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



inequitable in its operation, and was exacted with exasperating insolence of language and 
harshness of conduct — was commenced at Bendigo in 1853, and soon spread to the other 
gold-fields. Leagues were formed, and the Government, far from exhibiting a conciliatory 
spirit, issued an order, in October, 1854, that the police should devote two days a week 
to hunting down unlicensed diggers. Nowhere was the public indignation inspired by this 
mistaken policy stronger than at Ballarat, and an accident kindled this indignation into 
a flame. In a scuffle a digger named Scobie was killed in the Eureka Hotel on 
Specimen Hill, kept by one Bentley, who was believed to be implicated in the murder. 
The police magistrate, before whom Bentley was brought, acquitted him — under corrupt 
influences, it was alleged. Certain it is that he was removed from office ; he afterwards 
migrated to British Columbia, embezzled some money there, and committed suicide in 
Paris. Indignation meetings were held, and at one of these, on the 12th of October, 
the hotel was set on fire and burned down. Bentley himself escaped on horseback. 
Three men, not one of whom was concerned in the act, were arrested, and a public 
meeting was promptly held, at which resolutions were adopted demanding their release, 
and afifirming the right of the people to the exercise of political power, and at the 
same time asking for the abolition of the license fee. The three prisoners — Maclntyre, 
Fletcher and Westerby — were conveyed to Melbourne for trial, and each was sentenced 
to short terms of imprisonment. Another demand was made for their release, but was 
refused, and the aspect of affairs was so threatening at Ballarat that two detachments 
of infantry were ordered up from Melbourne. They reached that place on the 28th of 
November, and were attacked by the diggers who followed them to the camp, from 
which a strong body of police made a sortie and drove their assailants back. Two dajs 

afterwards the local 
authorities ordered 
another digger- hunt, 
and the military were 
called out to support 
the police. The dig- 
gers resisted, and mat- 
ters had now reached 
such a pass that they 
organized themselves 
for an armed defence, 
elected Mr. Peter Lalor 
as their commander-in- 
chief, and entrenched 
themselves behind a 

stockade close to Eureka Street. On Sunday, the 3rd of December, in the gray dawn 
of an Australian summer's day, the military and the police, including a strong body of 
cavalry, proceeded to attack the Stockade. Besides Mr. Peter Lalor, who acted as 
commander-in-chief to the insurgent miners, the leaders of the so-called rebels were 
Frederick Vern, a native of Hanover, an Italian named Carboni Raffaello, Alfred Black, 
John Lynch, J. W. Esmond, J. B. Humffray, James H. M'Gill, Curtain, Lesman and 




A GOLD ESCORT IN THE FIFTIES. 
Adapted from a sketch by F. Gill. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



347 




548 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



Kenworthy. The diggers who took an active part in the defence of the Stockade 
numbered two hundred or thereabout ; and they conducted themselves with great bravery. 
The mihtary and poHce numbered two hundred and seventy-six. Of these one hundred 
and seventeen, belonging to the Fortieth Regiment, were commanded by Captain Wise 
and Lieutenants Bowdler, Hall and Gardyne; sixty-five belonged to the Twelfth Regiment, 
under the command of Captain Queade and Lieutenant Paul : the mounted police, led 
by Sub-inspectors Furnley. Langley, Chomley and Lieutenant Cossack, numbered .seventy ; 
and the foot police, under Sub-inspector Carter, twenty-four. 

After several volleys had been fired on both sides, the first line of defence, a rough 
barricade, was crossed, and the police sprang over the inner barrier and captured the 
flag hoisted by the insurgents. The military followed, and in spite of the gallant resis- 
tance offered by the diggers, carried the entrenchment at the point of the bayonet. 
During the engagement, which lasted for nearly half an hour, several volleys were fired 
on both sides. Captain Wise, of the Fortieth, was mortally wounded; Mr. Peter Lalor ' 
was left for dead in the Stockade, but escaped with the loss of an arm ; Lieutenant 
Paul, of the Twelfth, was severely wounded ; about thirt\- of the insurgents are believed 
to have been killed, one hundred and twenty-five were taken prisoners, while the casual- 
ties among the military were four dead and many wounded. All the tents witliin the 
enclosure were burnt down, and the district was placed under martial law. Upon the ist 
of April, 1855, the prisoners were arraigned on a charge of high treason in the Supreme 
Court at Melbourne, but the three leading actors in the insurrection, Messrs. Lalor, Vern 

and Black, succeeded in evading the vigi- 
lance of the police, and the fir'st-named 
gentleman, who is only recently deceased, 
was for years afterwards Speaker of the 
Legislative Assembly of X'ictoria. Public 
sympathy was so powerfully enlisted on 
behalf of the insurgents, owing to the charac- 
ter of the provocation tlic)' had received to 
take up arms in resistance to the malad- 
ministration of the law, that no jury could 
he found to convict th(; men who had been 
placed upon their trial. Their defence was 
gratuitously undertaken by several of the 
leading barristers, and their acquittal was 
hailed witli general satisfaction. It was 
followed by an amnesty, and the judicious 
removal of the causes which had led to the 
outbreak. .A commission of inquiry declared 
that the diggers had been goaded to insur- 
rection by bad laws badly enforced, and recommended the introduction of constitutional 
government, with a -broad franchise as the basis of its representative system. 

Between the last hours of the year 1855 and the first of the year 1856, Sir Charles 
Hotham succumbed to an attack of dysentery, brought on or aggravated by mental worry, 




HON. PETER LALOR. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF 1 7C TORI A. 



349 



and the administration of the Government devolved on Major-General Macarthur. A few 
weeks before this event, namely, on the 23rd of November, 1855, a new Constitution, 
prepared by the Legislative Council of Victoria, and sanctioned by the Imperial Parliament, 
was proclaimed. It established responsible government, and created two Chambers, both 
of them elective. The first Cabinet, with Mr. Haines as its chief, took ofifice, and at 
the first general election, Messrs. Lalor and Humffray— the latter also one of the insur- 
gents at the Eureka Stockade— were returned to the Assembly for the district of Ballarat. 

Sir Henry Barkly — Burke and Wills. 

Sir Henry Barkly, who had been appointed to succeed Sir Charles Hotham, did not 
arrive in the colony until the 23rd of December, 1856, and the first few months of his 
residence in Victoria were 
darkened b\- a domestic be- 
reavement, which occasioned 
general sorrow. Lady Barkl)- 
was driving out in a pony- 
phaeton, when her vehicle was 
overturned !))■ a runaway om- 
nibus, and slie herself was 
violently thrown out. A few 
days afterwards she was pre- 
maturely delivered of a son ; 
the shock had proved too 
great for her system ; she 
sank under it, and was laid 
in the same grave with her 
infant. Lad\' Barkly was uni- 
versally popular, and the tru- 
est sympathy was e.xpressed 
on all sides for her discon- 
solate husband, who was sur- 
rounded at the same time 
with the troubles and anxie- 
jties of the first ministerial 
crisis which had occurred in 
the newly-constituted colony. 

During the seven years 
in which he held office some 

radical changes were made by the Legislature in its own Constitution and in the laws of 
the c(jlon\-. Manhood suffrage and vote by ballot were instituted, and the property quali- 
fication for Members of the Assembly was abolished. Large areas of land were thrown open 
for selection, in quantities not exceeding six hundred and forty acres for each person, 
and State aid to religion was abrogated. Among the incidents with which Sir Henry 
Barkly was personally identified was the memorable Burke and Wills expedition. 




SIR CHARLES HOTHAM 



o50 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TEA TED. 



The Royal Society (at that time the Philosophical Institute of Victoria), in. 
November, 1857, had taken up the question of exploring the interior of Australia, and 
had appointed a Committee to inquire into and report upon the subject. In September, 
1858, the sum of one thousand pounds was anonymously offered for the promotion of 
this object, on condition that a further sum of two thousand pounds should be obtained 
by subscription within a twelvemonth. This amount having been raised in the time 
specified, the Victorian Parliament supplemented it by a vote of six thousand pounds, 
and an e.xpedition was organized under the leadership of Mr. Robert O'Hara Burke, 
with G. J. Landells as second in command; W. J. Wills, surveyor and astronomer; T. 
Beckler. medical ofificer and botanist ; L. Becker, artist and naturalist ; C. D. Ferguson 
assistant and foreman, and nine associates. Twenty-five camels, twenty-three horses, with 
forage, waggons for transport, food, stores and medicine were provided for the explorers, 
who started from the Royal Park, Melbourne, on the 20th of August, i860, amidst the 
valedictions of a vast assemblage. The instructions furnished to Burke directed him to 
make Cooper's Creek the base of his operations — to form a depot there, to explore the 
countr)- lying between it and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and to follow water-courses and 
tracts yielding herbage wherever practicable. At the same time he was entrusted " with 
the largest discretion as regards the formation of depots and his movements generally," 
inasmuch as, when the expedition passed beyond the limits of pastoral settlement, it 

would be necessarily outside the con- 
trol of the Committee. At Menin- 
die, on the Darling, a resident 
named Wright offered to show 
Burke a well-watered track to the 
Barcoo, and the leader, with Wills, 
six men and some camels, started 
on the igth of October. It is be- 
lieved that intelligence had reached 
him, while he was at Menindie, of 
Stuart's intended expedition across 
the centre of Australia, and that he 
(Burke) was anxious to be the first 
to achieve the exploit. At any rate, 
he pushed on to Torowoto, on the 
thirtieth parallel of south latitude, 
whence he sent hack Wright, whom 
he had appointed third officer, to 
bring up the rest of the expedition 
to Cooper's Creek, which Burke 
and Wills had reached on the iith 
of November. A ddpdt was formed, and for six weeks Burke awaited the arrival of the 
rest of the party under Wright. Weary of the delay Burke and Wills, with two 
assistants, Gray and King, one horse and six camels, set forth on Sunday, the i6th of 
December; leaving four men, six camels, and twelve horses at the depot, in charge of 




SIR HENRY BARKLV. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE VICTORIA. 



351 



William Brahe, pending the arrival of Wright. The latter did not leave Menindie until 
the 27th of January, 1861, and on the way up to Cooper's Creek the party was 
attacked by scurvy, to which Becker and two of the assistants succumbed. With a 
dilatoriness which is quite inexplicable, Wright moved forward, so slowly that on the 
29th of April he had not reached the Creek, .but met Brahe and his party returning 
thence. Brahe had patiently waited 
at the ddpot for four months and 
four days, and then, despairing of 
Burke's return, had started south- 
ward on the 2 1 St of April. 

In the meantime Burke and 
Wills were pushing across the Con- 
tinent, with heroic determination but 
injudicious speed. They reached 
the tropics on the 7th of Januar)', 
1 86 1, and they stood upon the banks 
of the Flinders River on the loth 
of February. By this time their 
provisions were reduced to eighty- 
three pounds of flour, thirty-eight 
pounds of meal, twelve pounds of 
biscuit, the same quantity of rice, 
and ten pounds of sugar, and on the 
2 1 St of February they began to re- 
trace their steps. The whole of 
the party soon afterwards fell ill, 

and their provisions began to run short. They were obliged to leave one of the 
camels behind, and to kill two of the others, as also the horse. During the night 
of the 1 6th of April, Gray died, and five days afterwards the three survivors reached 
the depot at Cooper's Creek, and found it deserted. On a tree was the direction : 
" Dig three feet westward." There they came upon a camel-trunk containing a letter 
stating that Brahe and his party had left the dcpdt on that very day. Even then, 
so leisurely did the latter move, if Burke, after a night's rest, had followed them 
up, he would have overtaken them, or failing that would have met them returning to 
Cooper's Creek ; for Brahe and Wriglit went back to the dt!p6t, arrived there on the 
8th of May, and never thought of looking to see if the buried provisions had been 
disturbed. Had they done so they would have found a letter from Burke stating that 
he and his companions had started off in the direction of Mount Hopeless sixteen days 
previously. Baffled in their attempts to reach South Australia by that route, the three 
men would have starved, but for the seeds of the nardoo plant, which forms an article 
of diet with the natives in the district. Wills struggled back to the dipot on the 30th 
of May, buried his journal there, but discerned no traces of the place having been 
visited since he left. On rejoining Burke and King, all three met with kindly treatment 
from some natives, but fatigue, hunger, and the inclemency of the winter nights had 




ROBERT O H.\RA BURKE. 



352 



^ US TRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



told fearfully on the explorers. Wills was the first to succiimti, and faced his death 
with wonderful cheerfulness and serenity. A few days afterwards, Burke, feeling his end 
approaching, begged King to remain with him to the last, and to leave his corpse 
unburied with his pistol in his hand. His release occurred on the following morning, 
and poor King was left alone. He set out in search of a native camp, and after 
wandering about for some days was fortunate enough to find one, and to meet with a 
hospitable reception. This was towards the end of June, before which Wright had 
reached the Darling, and sent despatches to the Exploration Committee in Melbourne 
explaining the position of affairs. Five relief parties were promptly organized, and started 
from different points of the Continent in search of the missing men. One of these 
parties (led by Mr. A. W. Howitt, a son of William and Mary Howitt), started in 
June, 1861, to reach the Barcoo from Menindie, gained that River on the 8th of 
September, and a week afterwards succeeded in finding King under the following circum- 
stances, the particulars of which are derived from the M.S. diary of Mr. Edwin j. 
Welch, surveyor to the Victorian Contingent Exploration Party, as it was called. On 
the morning of Sunday, the 15th of September, as the party were proceeding along the 
banks of a creek, their attention was attracted by the shouts and gesticulations of a 
large body of natives on the other side, who were pointing down the creek, where 

several other blacks appeared to be 
awaiting the arrival of the ex- 
plorers. On approaching them Mr. 
Welch was startled by observing 
what appeared to be a white man 
among them. " Gi\ing my horse 
his head," he writes, " I dashed 
down the Ixmk towards him, when 
he fell on his knees in the sand 
for a few moments in the attitude 
of prayer. On reaching him I hur- 
riedly asked, 'Who, in the name of 
wonder, are you ?' and received the 
reply, ' I am King, sir, the last man 
of the exploring expedition.' The 
party having come in, we halted and 
camped. King was put in a tent 
and carefully attended to, and by 
degrees we got his story from him." 
The emaciated surxivor of the 
disastrous enterprise is described as 
looking more like an animated skeleton when he was found than anvthint,^ else, and as 
resembling a blackfellow in almost everything but colour. His narrative was a truly 
pathetic one. The three explorers on leaving the dcpdt at Cooper's Creek took with 
them the two camels, both of which, succumbing soon afterwards to privations and fatigue, 

Their own provisions were speedily exhausted ; their ragged clothing 




W. J. WILLS. 



had to be shot. 



HISTORICAL RFA'IEW OF VICTORIA. 



553 



afforded them an insufficient protection against the low temperature to which they were 
exposed at night ; and their ijodies (enfeebled by the meagre and innutritious food 
derivable from the seed of the nardoo, pounded into powder, and then baked), were 
incapable of offering any effectual resistance to disease. Wills was the first to feel the 

approach of death, and begged of 
Hurke and King to seek for the 
blackfellows as their only chance of 
salvation by procuring food. They 
did so, although reluctant to leave 

their comrade 
in a position 
so critical, 
and after a 
weary and in- 
effectual jour- 
ney of from 




twelve to fifteen miles Rurke felt himself too 
much exhausted to proceed any further. In 
the night he was conscious that his end was 
near, gave his last instructions to his faithful 
companion, and about eight o'clock in the morn- 
ing of the 29tli of June breathed his last, and King was left alone. 

I' aim ant! famishing, the Ijrave survivor, determined to persevere in his efforts to 
procure some food for Wills, was fortunate enough to find a large supply of nardoo 
in a deserted _<^itiiya/i, with whicli lie retraced his steps to where he had left the second 
of his leaders. I'our days had been unavoidably consumed in going ancf coming, and 
poignant were the grief and dismay of the forlorn wayfarer on discovering that he had 
returned to a corpse. King remained with it, having for a fortnight no other com- 
panions but his own sad thoughts, and then covering up the emaciated body as best 
he could, he set out in .search of a tribe of black.s. On finding one he was at first 
kindly received, but was presently regarded as a burdensome encumbrance. He continued 



354 



^ USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



to cling to them, however, with all the pertinacity of despair, until at last he came to be 
looked upon with feelings of compassion, and was tolerated as a poor dependent. Thus, 
from the middle of July until the 15th of September, John King lived the life of the 
aboriinnes, buoyed up by the hope that his fellow-colonists would not suffer him to 
perish in the wilderness, but would rescue him sooner or later. The narrative would be 
incomplete if we omitted to mention that the kindly natives were liberally rewarded by 
the Victorian Government for the shelter and protection they had afforded to the sole 
survivor of the expedition. 

After the remains of Wills and Burke had been found and buried, the Contingent 
Expedition started on the return journey as far as Menindie, whence Mr. Welch, 
deputed by his leader to conduct King to Melbourne, set out, while Mr. Howitt 
remained in camp to rest his men and camels before proceeding further south. Mr. 
Howitt was subsequently instructed to revisit Cooper's Creek and bring back the bones 
of the heroic explorers, in order that they might receive a public funeral, which proved 
to be one of the most impressive spectacles ever witnessed in the capital of Victoria. 

Large sums of money were voted to the nearest of kin of Burke and Wills, and 
an annuity was settled on King, which he did not live many years to enjo\-, his 

constitution having been shattered 
by the privations and hardships he 
had undergone ; while the heroic 
exploit of the two explorers was 
commemorated by bronze statues of 
the two men, modelled and cast by 
the late Charles Summers, and 
erected in one of the principal 
thoroughfares of Melbourne, the 
more 'important incidents in which 
the leaders had figured being com- 
memorated by bronze bas-reliefs 
on the plinth. 

The other search expeditions 
proved to be the means of adding 
largely to our knowledge of the 
interior of the Continent, and of 
opening up to pastoral settlement 
enormous areas of country previ- 
ously believed to be deserts. 
Flocks and herds now graze in 
the immediate neighbourhood of 
the spot where Burke and Wills perished, and the names of Landsborough, Walker 
and McKinlay, like that of Mr.. Alfred Howitt, will ever be honourably associated 
with those of the heroic men who have just been mentioned as the pioneers of 
mdustrial progress and civilization in the heart of this Continent, and whose labours 
have assisted so materially in its development. Nor must we omit to mention the name 




JOHN KING. 




O 

n 

S 



D 

O 



M 

►J 

< 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



355 



of the donor of the thousand pounds, which gave the first impulse to the work of 
exploring the interior. It was Mr. Ambrose Kyte, a self-made citizen of Melbourne. 

From the Administration of Governor Darling. 

The period during which Sir C. H. Darling represented Her Majesty in Victoria, 
1 863- 1 866, was an exceedingly troubled one, as it was that of an angry and protracted 
conflict with respect to the future fiscal policy of the country, in which a majority of 
the people and the Legislative Assem 
bly espoused the cause of Protection, 
while a large and influential minority 
and the Legislative Council sought 
to maintain that of Free Trade. A 
Bill imposing numerous customs 
duties of a protective character was 
passed by the Lower and rejected by 
the Upper House. The measure was 
then tacked on to the Appropriation 
Bill, which was in consequence thrown 
out by the Council. The Govern- 
ment proceeded to collect the duties 
on the authority of the Assembly, 
and as no funds were available for 
the Public Service, the Executive 
Council, with the approbation of the 
Governor, borrowed money from one 
of the banks and confessed judgment 
as often as the loan reached forty 
thousand pounds. The collection of 
customs duties on a mere resolution of the Assembly was pronounced by the Supreme 
Court to be illegal, and in another session the Tariff Bill, severed from the Appropriation 
Bill, was again passed by the Lower and again thrown out by the Upper House. A 
dissolution followed, and the new Assembly numbered fifty-eight Protectionists to twenty 
Free-traders. That Chamber for a third time passed the measure in controversy, which was 
for a third time rejected. The Ministry resigned, and Mr. Fellows, as leader of the Oppo- 
sition, formed an Administration and asked for a dissolution, but the Governor would 
neither consent to grant it, nor to see the Chief Secretary. In the meantime the salaries 
and wages of every person in the service of the Crown had fallen ten weeks in arrear ; 
the late Chief Secretary, Sir James M'Culloch, had returned to office, and a third 
session of Parliament was held, in which the Tariff Bill was passed through all its 
stages, and sent up to the Council with a preamble asserting the absolute and exclusive 
right of the Legislative Assembly to grant supplies. This was objected to by the Upper 
House as inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution Act, and a con- 
ference was agreed to, when, the obnoxious portions of the preamble having been 
withdrawn, the measure was passed through all its stages, as also the Supply Bill, and 




THE GRAVE OF BURKE AND WILLS IN THE 
MELBOURNE CEMETERY. 



356 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED, 



the crisis terminated. Its conclusion was precipitated by the arrival of the mail at 
Adelaide, bringing the intelligence of the recall by Her Majesty of Sir C. H. Darling, 
on the ground that he had not maintained that strict neutrality during the political 
crisis which, as a constitutional Governor, it was incumbent upon him to observe. His 
departure from Melbourne was made the occasion of a great public demonstration on 
the part of his political friends, and the Assembly afterwards voted Lady Darling twenty 
thousand pounds of the public money as a solatium for her husband's recall. The Bill 

for the appropriation of 
this amount did not 
meet with the concur- 
rence of the Legislative 
Council. An unsuccess- 
ful attempt was made 
by the Assembly to 
force the Upper House 
to acquiesce in it by 
means of a tack, and 
another dead-lock en- 
sued. Then came the 
news of Sir Charles 
Darling's death in Eng- 
land, and Mr. Fellows 
proposed that an an- 
nuity should be granted 
to Lady Darling — a 
suggestion which met 
with the approbation of 
all parties, and thus the 
crisis came to an end. 
The Rt. Hon. J. H. 
T. Manners-Sutton, who 
afterwards became Vis- 
count Canterbury by the 
death of his father, as- 
sumed the Governorship 
of Victoria on the 15th 
of August, 1866, and 
held it until the 2nd 
of March, 1873. During his term of office there was a partial lull in the vehemence of 
party warfare ; the fiscal policy of the country had been settled, the revenue was generally 
prosperous, manufacturing enterprise underwent a considerable expansion, the railway sys- 
tem of the colony was being steadily developed, and the absence of any violent strife in 
politics, after the settlement of the exciting " Darling Grant " question, proved to be 
conducive to the welfare and progress of all classes of the community. There were, it is 






THE MONUMENT TO BURKE AND WILLS. 



I 



HISTORICAL REVIEW QE VICTORIA. 



357 






% 

£ 
¥ 



rf* ». r^^ 





true, six changes of Ministry in less than seven years, but the earth continued to 
" bring forth its kindly fruits in due season " notwithstanding, and the beneficial opera- 
tions of human industry remained unaffected by the substitution in the Cabinet of one 
set of men for another. One measure of more than ordinary importance received the 
Royal assent at the hands of Viscount Canterbury. This was the Education Act of 
1872, drafted by Mr. 
Wilberforce Stephen. 
Two systems, the na- 
tional and denomina- 
tional, had Ijcen pre- 
viously in operation. 
These were abolished 
by the law which came 
into force on the ist 
of Januray, 1873, its 
fundamental principle 
being gratuitous, secu- 
lar and compulsory 
instruction up to a 
certain standard. 
During the first twelve 
years of its operation 
there was an increase 
of seventy-two per 
cent., in the number 
of schools opened ; of 
seventy-four per cent, 
in the number of in- 
structors ; of sixty- 
three per cent., in 
that of the scholars 
on the rolls ; of seven- 
ty-six per cent., in 
their average attend- 
ance ; and of sixty-six 
per cent., in the esti- 
mated average num- 
ber of distinct children 
in attendance. 

The visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Victoria occurred during Viscount Canterbury's 
term of office, and called forth demonstrations of loyalty and a display of enthusiasm in 
which the inhabitants of all parts of the colony participated. He laid the first stone of 
the new Town Hall in Swanston Street, and also of a spacious hospital on the St. Kilda 
Road, near the city, which, in his honour, received the name of the Alfred Hospital. 




THE DISCOVERY OF JOHiN' KING BY E. J. WELCH. 



358 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Sir George Ferguson Bowen succeedeel Viscount Canterbury, and took office on the 
31st of March. 1873. He, too, soon found himself embroiled in political troubles. The 
old feud between the two Houses of Parliament had slumbered, but had not ceased. 
They had differed on the subject of payment of Members. On two occasions the Upper 

House had acquiesced in a measure of 
this kind to be operative for three 
years, but in 1877, at the beginning of 
the third session of the Parliament, a 
new Ministry, at the head of which 
was Mr. Berry, backed by a powerful 
majority, announced that it did not in- 
tend to introduce a specific measure 
for the renewal of this payment, but 
would tack the item to the Appro- 
priation Bill. It did so, and the Council 
set the Bill aside. Thus there were 
no funds available for the payment of 
public servants, and on the 8th of 
January, 1878, which was thenceforward 
known as " Black Wednesday," a notice 
appeared in the Government Gazette 
dismissing the Heads of Departments, 
together with the Judges of County 
Courts, Courts of Mines, Courts of 
Insolvency, Police Magistrates, Crown 
Prosecutors, and a number of other 
functionaries. The proceeding was ad- 
mitted to be a "revolutionary" one, and its effect on the community, by impairing confi- 
dence and inspiring alarm, was disastrous. Property depreciated in value, business underwent 
a sudden contraction, there was a considerable exodus of capital and labour to a neigh- 
bouring colony, and party 'feeling was greatly exacerbated by the extreme measures 
resorted to by the Government. On the 28th of May the Council passed a separate 
Bill for the. payment of Members, and also an Appropriation Bill with the tack omitted. 
In the Assembly soon afterwards a measure was introduced which virtually deprived the 
Upper House of most of its power as a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature, and intro- 
duced the principle of the plebiscite. It was thrown out by the Council, and the Lower 
House voted five thousand pounds sterling to enable Mr. Berry and a colleague to proceed 
to England for the purpose of conferring with the Secretary of State for the Colonies on 
the subject of the constitutional difficulties of the colony. On the 4th of December Sir 
George Bowen received a despatch announcing his recall, and informing him that the 
Marquis of Normanby had been appointed as his successor. His Lordship assumed office 
on the 27th of February, 1879. In the meantime Messrs. Berry and Pearson had 
proceeded to England to invoke Imperial interference in the political troubles of the 
colony. But Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who was at that time at the head of the 




GOVERNOR SIR CHARLES H. DARLING. 



r 
f 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 359 

Colonial Office, had already signified that, in his opinion, no sufficient case had been 
made out for the intervention of the British Parliament, and to this opinion he 
continued to adhere. The right of self-government had been conferred upon the colony 
of Victoria, and it was for her to work out her own constitutional problems. He 
advised the Assembly not to introduce foreign elements into Supply Bills, and he 
considered that the Council in such a case was not likely to reject them. The despatch, 
which was shown to Messrs. Berry and Pearson before its transmission to the Governor, 
concluded by stating that the Imperial Parliament would never alter the Constitution of 
Victoria at the request of one House only. After this the political effervescence, which 
had lasted with little interruption for upwards of a decade, subsided. Parties became 
more evenly balanced, and there was less temptation to resort to " the falsehood of 
extremes." Happily, moreover, the project of an international exhibition to be held in 
Melbourne, as the sequence of that which had been so brilliantly successful in Sydney, 
served to divert men's minds from the strife and stress of politics. There had previously 
been five industrial exhibitions in the former city. The first two — those of 1854 and 1861 
— had been of a purely local character; the others, held in 1866, 1872, and 1875 
respectively, were intercolonial. The number of exhibits in 1854 was four hundred and 
twenty-eight only; in 1875 't had risen to four thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine, 
or, in other words, it had decupled. 

Thj; Melbourne International Exhibition. 

An Act was passed by the Victorian Legislature in 1878 appropriating the sum of 
one hundred thousand sterling for the erection of a building in the Carlton Gardens, 
for which the designs prepared by Messrs. Reed and Barnes were accepted by the 
Royal Commission appointed to conduct the undertaking. It was found necessary to sup- 
plement the space covered by the main building by the erection of two annexes, and 
in the end the total cost of the structure amounted to upwards of a quarter of a million 
sterling, which represented five per cent, of the current revenue of the colony. The 
fagade facing the Carlton Gardens has a frontage of five hundred feet ; the dome has 
an elevation of two hundred and twenty feet, and the two towers which flank the southerrt 
entrance rise to a height of one hundred feet. The eastern and western fa9ades are four 
hundred and sixty feet in length. The principal edifice is cruciform, and the dome rises 
from the intersection of the naves and transepts. Both the drum and the cupola are 
octagonal, each having an internal diameter of sixty feet, while the apex of the dome is 
one hundred and sixty-five feet above the floor. At the extremity of the western nave 
an organ was erected by Mr. Fincham, a local builder, at a cost of five thousand pounds. 
The space covered by the main structure is less than one-fifth of the area embraced by 
the annexes, which were less substantially built ; but even then they were not more than 
adequate for tlie immense volume of exhibits which poured in from all parts of the 
world. Australia may be said to have been practically unknown to the great bulk 
of the people of Europe until the International Exhibition in Sydney opened their 
eyes to the territorial and commercial importance of these colonies, the generally 
prosperous circumstances of their inhabitants, the character and variety of the natural 
resources of the country', and the magnitude of the markets, which the rapid increase 



36o 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



of population would eventually open up for the manufactured products of the old world, 
and more especially for those articles of luxury, which are the outgrowth of the complex 
civilization, and the artificial wants of societies, which have enjoyed many centuries of wealth 
and culture. Hence, every nation in central, western and southern Europe — France, Belgium, 
Germany, Holland, Austria, Scandinavia, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Switzerland -was repre- 
sented at the Melbourne International Exhibition; as well as the United States, India, 

Mauritius, Japan, China and the 
South Sea Islands, together with 
the whole of the Australasian 
Colonies. Nor was the display 
limited exclusively to the pro- 
ductions of commercial industry, 
for the galleries in the principal 
buildina^ were filled with marble 
and bronze statuary, and with oil 
paintings and water-colour draw- 
in<rs from the chief art centres 
of Europe. Great Britain, France, 
Belgium, Germany, Italy, Holland 
and Austria, all contributed to 
render this department of the 
Exhibition particularly attractive, 
the aggregate result being a col- 
lection of fifteen hundred works 
of art, irrespective of a large 
number of pictures, many of them 
highly meritorious, sent in by 
Australian artists. 
The Melbourne International Exhibition was opened on the ist of October, 1880, by 
the Marquis of Normanby, in the presence of the Governors of New South Wales, 
South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, the commanders of the British and 
foreign war-ships lying in the Bay, and the principal personages of the colony. The day 
had been proclaimed a public holiday, Melbourne was fairly decorated for the occasion, 
and nothing had been neglected that was calculated to heighten the festive and picturesque 
character of the ceremonial. Sir W. J. Clarke, as the President of the Commission, read 
the address prepared for the occasion — after the performance of a cantata, specially com- 
posed by M. Leon Caron ; the words having been written for it by Mr. J. W. Meaden. 
A telegram was dispatched to Her Majesty the Queen announcing the successful opening 
of the Exhibition. 

To the native-born population of the colony such a display of the products of the 
looms, factories and work-shops of Europe and the East proved a revelation. It was 
indeed an illustrated lesson-book of economic geography and industrial development, and 
it brought about quite a revolution in public taste, more especially as regards household 
furniture and decoration. It created a demand for elegant and artistic cabinet work. 




VISCOUNT CANTERBURY. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OE VICTORIA. 



361 



ceramics, hangings and metal ornaments, and many British and foreign houses established 
branches in Melbourne for the purpose of supplying that demand ; while it also stimulated 
local ingenuity, inventiveness and enterprise, and supplied higher standards of judgment 
and comparison to colonial artificers than those previously accessible. 

During the seven months the Exhibition was open the admissions of all classes 
numbered one million three hundred and nine thousand four hundred and ninety-six, the 
receipts amounted to fifty thousand pounds, and the deficiency was covered by a sum 
of about six thousand pounds. It closed in May, 1881, and after all the exhibits had 
been removed, and the annexes disposed of to the Railway Department, the building was 
handed over to the control of a body of trustees in order that it might be applied to 
purposes of popular instruction and recreation. 

The only other important event which occurred during the time the Marquis of 
Normanby was Governor of Victoria, was a reform in the Constitution of the Legis- 
lative. Council. This was effected 
in 1 88 1. It increased the num- 
ber of Members from thirty to 
forty-two, lowered the property 
qualification required from them, 
abbreviated the tenure of their 
seats, and widened the electoral 
basis uj3on which that House 
rests ; any person rated on a 
freehold of the annual value of 
ten pounds, or a leasehold of the 
annual value of twenty-five pounds, 
being entitled to exercise the 
franchise for the Legislative Coun- 
cil. The same year may be said 
to have witnessed the termination 
of that epoch of political Sturm 
und Drang which the colony had 
been passing through, with brief 
intermissions, for a period of 
thirty years. All the burning 
questions had burnt themselves 
out ; and after the overthrow of 

the third Berry Administration in July, 1881, and the advent to office of Sir Brj'an 
O'Loghlen— who announced a policy of " peace, progress, and prosperity " — there was a 
revival of confidence, and a general feeling that better times were at hand ; and this 
feeling, which events were beginning to justify, was strengthened by the formation in 
1883 of a coalition Government, comprising the leading members on both sides of the 
Assembly. This was sufficiently strong in Parliamentary support, and in the encourage- 
ment which it received from public opinion outside, to apply itself to the preparation 
and passage of measures of great public utility. One of these enabled the creation 




THE MARQUIS OF NORMANBY. 



362 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

of a Harbour Trust, while another vested the administration of the whole of the railways 
in \ictoria in a Hoard of Commissioners, three in number ; a Chairman for that Board 
having been procured from England, in the person of. Mr. Speight, a gentleman who 
had acquired his valuable training and experience in the management of one of the 
great trunk-lines in the mother-country. Under the prudent and commercial system of 
working the railways introduced by these gentlemen, the receipts from those under- 
takings have not merely sufficed to defray the interest on the loans contracted for their 
construction, as well as the working expenses, but have yielded a small surplus to the 
general revenue. As the removal of the railways from political influence had been 
found to be attended by such beneficial consequences, the same method of administration 
was resorted to for the whole of the Public Service of the colony ; and an Act was 
passed by which a Board of Commissioners was instituted for this purpose also, so as to 
remove appointments and promotions out of the hands of the Ministry for the time 
being. The failing health of both the Marquis and Marchioness of Normanby induced 
His Excellency to apply to the Secretary of State for the Colonies to be relieved from 
duties which were beginning to press too severely upon him ; and on the i8th of April, 
1884, the Marquis was authorized to relinquish his high trust into the hands of Sir 
William Stawell, the Chief Justice, who acted as Governor until the arrival of Sir Henry 
Brougham Loch in the following July. The new Governor had held for many years a 
similar appointment in the Isle of Man, where His Excellency and Lady Loch acquired 
a high degree of popularity. They cordially accepted the duties and responsibilities as 
well as the honours of their new position ; and were peculiarly well qualified, both 
by character and by temperament, for the leadership of society in this distant land. 

On the 1st of August, 1888, the Government celebrated the Centenary of the 
settlement of Europeans in Australia by a second Exhibition ; which proved, especially 
from an artistic standpoint, one of the most successful of its kind ever held beneath 
the Southern Cross ; as a world's fair it challenged comparison with even those of 
many of the established countries of the Old World ; while as a means of celebrating 
the anniversary of the landing of Captain Phillip upon the shores of the Continent, and 
the first rudimentary efforts at colonization, it outshone all the various attempts to render 
the year a memorable one to those Australians who had reached a period in their 
country's development, from which the struggles and the triumphs of a century might be 
contemplated. At the beginning of the year 1889 Sir Henry Brougham and Lady Loch, 
with their family, paid a visit to England, their departure being marked by a banquet 
tendered to the Governor by 4;he citizens of Melbourne. On the day of the Arcadia's 
departure immense crowds gathered at the Williamstown Pier, and testified to His 
Excellency's popularity by a genuinely enthusiastic valediction. The day following, the 
9th of March, Sir William C. F. Robinson was sworn in as Acting-Governor, and on 
the same day the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition was open to the public 
for the last time. Sir Henry Loch returned to the colony on the i8th of October, but 
left again for England on the 15th of the following month. During his brief stay in 
Melbourne a number of farewell festivities was tendered to the Governor by the people of 
the colony and manifested the estimation in which he was held. Lady Loch was no less 
popular, and before returning to England with her husband, by the Damascus, she was 



I 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



363 



the recipient of a farewell address, together with a diamond souvenir, from the ladies 
of Melbourne. On the 15th of the month Sir William C, F. Robinson was again 
sworn in as Acting-Governor, but on the 28th the Earl of Hopetoun arrived in the 
colony, and was accorded one of the most enthusiastic receptions that ever greeted the 




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364 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

advent of an Australian Governor; on the 4th of December His Excellency held his 
first levee in Melbourne, and established the basis of a popularity which has in no 
respect diminished during the period he has represented Her Majesty in the colony. 

The Colony of Victoria in 1890. 

It is but little more than half a century since Major Mitchell crossed this colony 
from the Murray to the sea ; found an infant settlement established in Portland Bay ; 
and discovered from the summit of Mount Macedon, on his return, something that 
looked like tents pitched on the site now occupied by the city of South Melbourne. 
This may be a fitting place, then^ to pause and inquire what has been accomplished 
since 1836. Over a million persons of European birth or descent inhabit the country of 
which that explorer has left us such glowing descriptions. 

The metropolis of the colony, with its belt of suburbs, which include three cities 
and fourteen other municipalities, contains within a ten-mile radius a population of nearly 
four hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. A Government, based on manhood suffrage, 
administers an annual revenue of over eight millions sterling ; and the laws of the com- 
munity are enacted by two Legislative Chambers, both of them elective. The principle 
of self-government is so widely ramified that the local affairs of upwards of one hundred 
and twenty shires, and sixty cities, towns and boroughs are managed b)- bodies chosen 
for that purpose by the rate-payers, and invested with the authority to levy and collect 
the funds necessary to be expended on works of public utility. 

Of the fifty-six million two hundred and forty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty 
acres of land comprehended within the limits of the colony, about fourteen million acres 
have passed into private ownership, and something like eight million acres are in process 
of alienation. Another twenty-one million acres are occupied as squatting runs, or under 
grazing rights. The extent of land under cultivation may be estimated at two million 
five hundred and sixty-five thousand acres, yielding between nine and ten million bushels 
of wheat, about three million bushels of oats, two million bushels of barley, one hundred 
and sixty thousand tons of potatoes, and four hundred thousand tons of hay, besides 
garden produce, fruit and hops. But, of course, these returns are liable to great fluctua- 
tions from year to year ; the aggregate value of the whole exceeding a sum not less 
than six million pounds sterling. Upon farms and stations, upwards of eleven million 
sheep, one million three hundred and eighty thousand head of cattle, and over three 
hundred thousand horses are being depastured. The annual "clip" of wool may be taken 
at seventy million pounds weight ; and the total value of pastoral and dairy produce, 
one year with another, will be found to average ten million pounds sterling. 

Exclusive of flour-mills, breweries, distilleries, woollen mills, brick-yards, potteries, soap 
and candle works, tobacco and cigar factories, tanneries, fellmongeries and wool-washing 
establishments, there are close upon three thousand manufacturing establishments in the 
colony, employing fifty thousand men, women and children, operating upon raw material 
of the annual value of eight million pounds, and turning out products exceeding thirteen 
million pounds in value. Including manufactories of all kinds the total number is three 
thousand one hundred and fifty-four, employing over fifty-six thousand hands ; and the 
approximate value of buildings, land, and machinery and plant is close upon fifteen 



HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA, 



365 



million pounds sterling. The gold raised reaches an average of eight hundred thousand 
ounces, of the value of four million pounds ; and the total contributions of Victoria to 
the world's stock of this precious metal exceeds fifty-six million ounces, valued at two 
hundred and twenty-four million pounds. The combined import and export trade of the 
colony represents a yearly 
average of over thirty-one 
million pounds sterling ; 
the bulk of the exports 
being articles of Victorian 
produce or manufacture. 

There are upwards 
of twenty-two hundred 
miles of railway open for 
trafific, and more than ten 
thousand miles of tele- 
graph in operation. 
Nearly sixteen hundred 
post-ofifices are scattered 
over the face of the 
country, and there are 
upwards of six hundred 
telegraph stations. 

The spiritual wants 
of the people are minis- 
tered to by eleven hun- 
dred priests and clergy- 
men of various denomi- 
nations, and there are as 
many as four thousand 
three hundred buildings 
used for Divine service, 
providing accommodation 

for eight hundred thousand worshippers. The registered clergy, by returns to the ist of 
January, 1888, numbering one thousand one hundred and one, were classified as follows: — 
Church of England, one hundred and ninety-seven ; Free Church of England, one ; 
Roman Catholics, one hundred and twenty-three ; Presbyterians, two hundred and seven ; 
Free Presbyterians, six ; Wesleyans, one hundred and thirty-seven ; Primitive Methodists, 
thirty-six ; United Methodist Free Church, twenty-seven ; Congregationalists, fifty-seven ; 
Baptists, forty-five ; Bible Christians, thirty-nine ; Evangelical Lutherans, fourteen ; Welsh 
Calvinists, nine ; Church of Christ, twenty-one ; Moravians, three ; Protestants unattached, 
one ; Unitarian, one ; Union, eight ; Swedenborgian, one ; Society of Friends, two ; 
Catholic Apostolic, sixteen ; Christian Israelites, one ; Jews, eight ; Salvation Army, one 
hundred and thirty-seven ; Australian Church, one ; and Seventh Day Adventists, three. 
The higher education of the inhabitants of the colony is conducted by the Univer- 




SIR HENRY BROUGHAM Lucll. 



366 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



sity, with its two affiliated colleges, one attached to the Church of England and the 
other to the Presbyterian Church. There are, besides, two Roman Catholic colleges, 
two Wesleyan colleges, and one, which is conducted by the Presbyterian Church, for 
ladies, the Scotch College, and numerous grammar schools and private educational 
establishments of a high character ; while the schools controlled directly by the State 
furnish gratuitous instruction to upwards of two hundred and thirty thousand children 
of both sexes, irrespective of the Roman Catholic schools maintained independently 
of the Government ; and of the Sunday schools connected with the principal places 
of worship belonging to the various denominations. The number of State schools 
in the colony on the 31st of December, 1887, was one thousand nine hundred and 
eleven. Of these nineteen were night schools. The number of children enrolled during 
this year was two hundred and thirty thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, of whom 
one hundred and nineteen thousand five hundred and fifty-nine were boys, and one 
hundred and eleven thousand three hundred and twenty-three were girls. The average 
attendance was one hundred and twenty-three thousand five hundred and sixty-three. The 
educational staff of the State system numbers four thousand two hundred and ninety-six 
persons ; of whom one thousand three hundred and seventy-one males, and five hundred 
and nine females, were enrolled as head teachers ; one hundred and seventy-one males 
and six hundred females, assistant teachers; five hundred and twenty-eight work-mistresses; 
and two hundred and nine males and nine hundred and eight females, pupil teachers. 
On the same date the private schools of all kinds throughout the colony numbered 
seven hundred and forty-nine, and had one thousand eight hundred and twelve teachers, 
and thirty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-three scholars. This included the six 
colleges and grammar schools, with sixty-two masters or professors, and one thousand and 
eighty-six pupils. 








OFF THE VICTOKIAN COAST. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



THE COAST-LINE. 



T~) ELATIVELY to the area of the colony its coast-line is somewhat extended, owing 
-*-*- to such spacious indentations as Port Phillip Bay, Western Port and Corner Inlet; 
as also to the southward trend of the land at the two points known as Cape Otway 
and Wilson's Promontory. Roughly speaking, there are about six hundred miles of sea- 
margin between Cape Howe at the eastern, and Mount Ruskin at the western, extremity 
of the Victorian Coast. Starting from the boundary line between the colony of New 
South Wales and the most easterly of the counties into which its offspring has been 
divided, the first object which meets the eye is the rocky island of Gabo, composed of 
porphyritic granite, upon which a light-house has been erected, standing about one 
hundred and eighty feet above the sea-level. It is therefore sighted by vessels passing 
southward before reaching Cape Howe, and by those proceeding northward as soon as 
they are abreast of Ram Head. At the point where the submarine cable from the 
light-house touches the shore, the coast-line is crescent-shaped, its southern horn resting 
on Little Ram Head. Here some bold cliffs, flanking the ocean, attain an altitude of 
nearly two hundred feet, and sweep round to Bastion Point, situated in the centre of 
the crescent, whence they decline in height to sixty-three feet. Close by is Mallacoota 
Inlet, a narrow neck of water which gives admission to the Purgagoolah Lakes, 
embosomed in wooded hills, and receiving the whole of the discharge of the Wallaga- 
raugh and Genoa Rivers. Both of these take their rise in New South Wales, 
the Genoa flowing down in a south-easterly direction between two mountain ranges, 
which help to augment its volume by their water-shed. After rounding Ram Head, 



368 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



Petrel Point and Cape Everard (or Hicks Point) come in view ; the latter, a bold 
headland forming the southern spur of a range which culminates in Mount Everard, 
seven miles inland, and one thousand two hundred feet high. Eight miles to the west- 
ward of this, Tamboon Inlet 
gives access to three lakes, 
united by narrow channels 
and fed by two streams — 
the Noorinbee and the Tam- 
boon, the courses of which 
are still unexplored. From 
this inlet to the mouth of 
the Snowy River the coast 
is for the most part marshy, 
with here and there a reedy 
lagoon, and here and there 
a shallow lake, which serve 
as breeding-places for innu- 
merable wild fowl, and as 
secure and secluded coverts 
for their young. One of 
these lakes, which has ob- 
tained the name of Syden- 
ham Inlet, is, however, of 
tolerably large proportions, 
and is united by a channel, 
a mile long, with a smaller 
sheet of water encircled by 
hills. But, excepting that 
the position of Mount Cann, 
about ten miles to the north- 
ward, has been defined, the 
country for fifty miles inland remains unexplored. At Cape Conran commences what is 
commonly called the Ninety-mile Beach, although in reality it is of much greater extent, 
stretching, in fact, as far as the entrance to Corner Inlet. Nine or ten miles from the 
point at which it commences, the Snowy River, whose rise is at no great distance from 
the sources of the Murrumbidgee in New South Wales, pours into the ocean its opulent 
flood, to which a hundred tributaries have lent their waters. The Ninety-mile Beach 
may be described in general terms as a prolonged and attenuated sand-bar, separating 
the sea from an equally narrow strip of lagoons locally designated the Back Lakes, 
inside of which are the greater sheets of water to which we shall hereafter have 
occasion more particularly to refer. Between Shallow Inlet east and the entrance to 
Corner Inlet quite an archipelago has been formed, under circumstances similar, in all 
probability, to those which were instrumental in building up the islets upon which the 
city of Venice was constructed, the rivers Albert and Tarra bringing down alltivintn 




THE GABO ISLAND LIGHT-HOUSE. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



369 



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from the land, and the sea casting up sand-banks as it comes rushing in. At the 
mouth of the Albert lies a little fishing-town, which has taken its name from the River. 
It is peopled by a hardy race 
of boatmen, to whose exer- 
tions the metropolis of Vic- 
toria is partly indebted for 
its supply of fish. 

Unfortunately their sources 
of livelihood are precarious 
in the extreme, especially du- 
ring the summer months, 
when it not unfrequently hap- 
pens that the entire consign- 
ment is ordered to be de- 
stroyed, in consequence of 
not reaching the market in a the pier, port albert. 

condition fit for human con- 
sumption. There are numerous indications of coal in the surrounding district, and hopes 
are confidently expressed that this portion of Victoria will become famous for its collieries. 
Some rich patches of gold have been struck at the foot of the Middle Range, and the 
neighbouring forests yield an abundance of the finest timber. About twenty years ago 
the Government expended a large sum of money in the erection of a pier at Welshpool, 
in order to facilitate the shipment of the produce of the surrounding country, but it 
was shortly after^wards burnt down ; it is believed, by an incendiary ; only a mass of 

charred timber serves 
to mark its site and 
commemorate the 
disaster. 

From the entrance 
to Corner Inlet the 
coast-line runs down 
nearly due south for 
a distance of more 
than five-and-twenty 
miles to the extremity 
of a mountainous 
peninsula, having an 
average breadth of 
sixteen miles, and ter- 
minating in the bold 
headland known as 
Wilson's Promontory. 
On the eastern side it is indented by Sealer's Cove and Waterloo Bay, between which 
the land juts out so as to form four prominences, entitled Horn Point, Hobb's Head, 




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ruKl ALBERT. 



370 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

Brown's Head and Cape Wellington ; a well-sheltered harbour, appropriately named Refuge 
Cove, lies between the second and third of these. On the western, which is also the 
windward side of the peninsula, there are three bays— Leonard, Norman and Oberon— 
partially protected from the violence of the sea by some islands, four or five miles 
distant from the main-land, and following its southerly trend. By far the greater part 
of the area of the peninsula is covered by irregular ranges, or by isolated mountains, 
which nowhere attain a greater altitude than two thousand five hundred feet ; but, massed 
together, they present an imposing appearance by reason of their bulk. Such trees 
as flourish on their slopes are deflected and contorted by the fierce winds with which 
they have to wrestle both in summer and in winter, and the sea-mists which are driven 
inwards are condensed into rain as they impinge upon the shaggy sides of Mount 
Boulder, Mount Wilson, Mount Oberon and Mount Ramsay, and thus form the sources 
of half-a-dozen streams which speedily lose themselves in the ocean. 

Wilson's Promontory is the most southerly point of the Victorian coast, and is 
crowned by a light-house which rises nearly four hundred feet above the level of the 
sea. From the eminence on which it stands the cliff shelves obliquely downward to the 
roaring surf below, which, when a strong south-westerly gale is blowing, leaps up the 
rocky barrier erected by Nature against its encroachments, and is shattered into clouds 
of spray, or churned into snow-white ridges of froth and foam. Nor can anything be 
imagined more sullen or more sombre than the aspect of this grim headland when it 
is partially enveloped in fogs, which augment the magnitude of its mass while blurring 
its outline, and only partially reveal the pharos which stands upon its crest. 

From South-west Point, nearly parallel with the light-house, but lying on the oppo- 
site side of the Promontory, the coast curves upward for nearly thirty miles to Waratah 
Bay, the line being broken only at Shallow Inlet, through which an entrance is gained 
to Yanakie Lake, about eight miles in length, but nowhere exceeding two miles in breadth, 
with a large tract of marshy country on its right shore, and the commencement of a 
mountain range at its northern extremity. In respect to contour Waratah Bay is one 
of the handsomest on the Victorian Coast. Its shape is that of a half-moon, and it is 
encircled by a range of hills on its western side. From Bell Point, which may be taken 
as defining its boundary to the east, it is ten miles to the entrance of Shallow Inlet, 
directly opposite. The little promontory upon which the township of Waratah is situated 
runs down to the narrow point of Cape Liptrap, a few miles behind which a hill, about 
five hundred and fifty feet in height, and bearing the same name, constitutes a 
prominent landmark. On the west shore of Waratah Bay, a little to the northward of 
Bird Rock, there is an outcrop of fine limestone, composed of ten layers, varying in 
thickness from six to ten feet, with a cave underneath the lower stratum, while the 
. summit of the bluff is overlaid by a mass of ferruginous sandstone, in which quantities 
of brown iron ore of great purity have been found. The whole formation is believed to 
belong to the upper silurian series, and its value, from an economic point of view, must 
be considerable, for the texture, as described by Mr. G. H. P. "Ulrich, is " crystalline 
granular, varying from fine to coarse-grained, and it assumes in places — more especially 
at the base of the bluff — the character of a black and white mottled and veined marble, 
suitable for chimney-pieces and other ornamental building work." An analysis made by 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



371 



I 
I 




Mr. Cosmo Newbery shews it to be one of the purest limestones yet discovered in Victoria, 
containing as it does nearly ninety-five per cent, of carbonate of lime, its other components 
being carbonate of iron, siHcate of alumina, and water, with traces of carbonate of magnesia. 
After passing Cape Liptrap the coast-line makes an abrupt bend to the northward, with 



k. 



372 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

a slight westerly inclination, and the range to which Mount Liptrap belongs dips down- 
ward to the sea at the point ; close to the shore, which is marshy in places and inter- 
sected by shallow lakes and reedy lagoons, lie half-a-dozen diminutive islands. At Point 
Smythe the entrance is reached of a large estuar)-, curving round in a south-easterly 
direction for a distance of ten miles, but nowhere exceeding two miles in breadth. It 
is known as Anderson's Inlet, and receives the waters of the Tarwin, a river that takes 
its rise in the ranges near Mirboo, forty or fifty miles distant from the coast ; but its 
intermediate meanderings are as yet undefined. Opposite to Point Smythe is Point 
Norman, a mile or two south of which rises, in Venus Bay, an isolated mass, appro- 
priately named the Petrel Rock, for here 

Amidst the flashing of feathery foam, 

The stormy petrel finds a liome ; 

A home, if such a place may be, 

For her who lives on the wide, wide sea. 

Four miles to the westward of the entrance to Venus Bay is Cape Paterson. In its 

immediate neighbourhood are numerous coal-seams, but in no ceise have the shafts, 

which were sunk to test the thickness of the veins, revealed the existence of more than 

two feet four inches of coal, lying for the most part upon sandy or dark gray .shales, 

interspersed with bands of indurated clay. 

After passing Cape Paterson we skirt the county of Moniington for a di.stance of 
fifteen miles, as the crow flies, to the eastern entrance to Western Port, where the most 
notable landmark is the narrow promontory, resembling the head of a spear, which juts 
out into the sea from Phillip Island, with Cape Woolamai at its acute point. Upon this 
bluff, which is connected with the Island by a narrow ridge of rock, thousands of 
mutton-birds annually congregate for the purpose of laying their eggs and rearing their 
young, acting in concert, organized like a regiment of soldiers, and taking up the posi- 
tions assigned to them by their leaders with an order, a regularity and an obedience 
which denote a rare intelligence and the perfection of discipline. Their collective resting- 
place is a huge parallelogram, surrounded by a low wall of stones. It is swept sinooth by 
the birds, and subdivided into a number of square enclosures, in the centre of which 
the female bird hollows out a cavity wherein to deposit her eggs, and when the process 
of incubation has been completed, and the young are sufficiently strong for flight, the 
whole colony takes wing to other regions, from which it will return, in the year 
following, almost on the very day and hour of its previous visit. 

Phillip Island presents a general resemblance in shape to a turtle, with its carapace 
to the north, its head to the west, and one fin stretched out so as to form what is 
called Pyramid Rock. The southern coast-line, from Point Grant to Cape Woolamai, a 
distance of five-and-twenty miles, is defined by ruddy cliffs of ironstone, rising to a 
height of a hundred feet, and scooped into hollows by the action of the wave.s. At low 
water masses of black rock are seen stretching far out into the sea, and presenting the 
appearance of a huge causeway roughly paved with boulders worn to the same level, 
and curiously fissured by the incessant planing of the sea ; the breakers that roll in upon 
this rugged platform from the south-west marking their sinuous outline by a broad and 
fluctuating fringe of foam. At a little distance from the shore the waves have sculp- 
tured some outlying rocks into fantastic shapes. One of these has received the appro- 



I 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



373 




priate appellation of the Pyramid, and another at the western extremity of the island ir, 
so amorphous as to have acquired the vague title of the Nobby. 

On the opposite side of the broad opening, through which a strong current runs 
into Western Port 
with every inflow of 
the tide, a bold pro- 
montory is thrown out 
in a south-westerly 
direction sheltering a 
little bay, around 
which are clustered 
the rudiments of a 
future watering-place, 
with a natural amphi- 
theatre for its "under- 
cliff." It bears the 
name of Flinders, and 
is the point of depar- 
ture for the submarine 
cable connecting the 
Australian Continent 
with the island of 
Tasmania. For some 
miles to the westward 
masses of crag are 
met with that look 
like ruined fortresses ; 
they are isolated frag- 
ments of the iron- 
bound coast that have 
been detached from 
the grim and storm- 
beaten cliffs that 
frown down upon 
them. The restless 
sea sometimes creeps 
up to them as if to 
take a stealthy glance 
at the resistance ca- 
pable of being offered 
by their bulk and 

strength to the advancing waves; at other times it leaps at them like a raging wild beast, 
and fills all the country-side with its resounding roar. Such, indeed, is the character of the 
coastal scenery all along the bold headland stretching as far as Cape Schank — with its 




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374 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

light-house occupying a commanding position for the guidance of vessels voyaging from 
the eastward, the westward, or the southward — and the romantic mass of basalt, deeply 
coloured by olivine and augite, known as the Pulpit Rock, lifting its rugged form above 
the angry waters which always surge, and sometimes furiously rave, about its base. 
From Cape Schank the coast is deflected obliquely, and almost in a straight line, to the 
north-west It consists for the most part of sand hummocks and dunes. These are 
found on examination to be largely composed of pulverized shells, ■i,^ov\^^-spiculcc, polyzoa, 
formanifera, and spines of the echini, thrown up and triturated apparently by the action 
of the " hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts," under the strong compulsion of the 
south-westerly gales, which prevail in this region at certain seasons of the year. 

Point Nepean and Point Lonsdale mark the entrance to Port Phillip Heads, passing 
which the coast-line curves round in a westerly direction to the Barwon Heads, where 
the boldly projecting headland designated Point Flinders serves as a breakwater to 
shelter the entrance to Lake Connewarre, into which are poured the waters of the 
Barwon. Thence the coast trends continually downwards towards the south-west, until it 
reaches its most southerly point in this part of Victoria at Cape Otway. In the interval 
something like a hundred creeks discharge their currents into the sea, and the scenery 
on shore assumes a character of remarkable grandeur and beauty after passing the village 
of Puebla. For a distance of sixty miles the land-wall is composed of carbonaceous 
mesozoic rocks, upwards of three hundred feet in thickness, exposed in almost continuous 
sections as far as Stony Creek, and obtaining in one place the grim appellation of the 
Demon's Bluff. They are geologically interesting, because, according to the report of 
Mr. P. M. Krause, who was one of the first to explore the district in 1S73, the range 
which now forms the water-shed between the Barwon and Gellibrand Rivers, " was in 
tertiary times an island about seventy miles long in a south-westerly direction, and from 
ten to sixteen miles in breadth, with a chain of hills upwards of one thousand feet in 
height." So rugged is the coast, that from Barwon Heads to Cape Otway there are 
only two places at which it is possible to effect a landing, namely, Loutit Bay and 
Apollo Bay, and neither of these is easily accessible when a south-westerly wind is 
blowing. The ranges, which run inland for a distance of upwards of twenty miles in a 
northerly direction from Apollo Bay, and reach their culminating point at Mount Sabine, 
one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight feet above the sea-level, are densely wooded: 
on the tertiary slopes honeysuckle scrub, the grass-tree and the ti-tree are found to 
prevail ; the stringy-bark predominates on the lower spurs, while the iron-bark nourishes 
at a loftier elevation ; near the corner of the range, messmate and blue-gum rise out of 
a thick undergrowth of shrubs and creepers ; in the valleys the vegetation is luxuriant 
in the extreme, the blue-gum, the beech and the black-wood being intermingled with the 
tree-fern, so that the finest foliage of the Australian forest is here combined and 
contrasted with an enchanting effect. Owing to the number of springs which issue from 
the northern slopes of the range, and the moisture of the atmosphere, the tree-ferns not 
merely abound in their natural habitat among the damp valleys, but climb to the summit 
of the secondary spurs, and crown them with their graceful plumes. The light-house at 
Cape Otway is admirably placed at the western extremity of an imposing headland about 
three miles in width, if measured from Point Flinders to Point Franklin ; the land 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



375 



rising behind it to a 

plateau, composed of 

calcareous sandstone, 

overlaid in places by 

dunes, the result of 

sand washed up on 

the shore and thence 

swept inland by the 

south-westerly gales. 

These dunes contain 

curious concretions 

resembling the fossi- 
lized branches and 

roots of trees, for 
which, in fact, they 
have been sometimes 

mistaken; on ex- 
amination, however, 
they are found to be 
composed of a magne- 
sian limestone. 

Five miles beyond 
the Otway the united 
waters of the Rivers 
Aire and Calder find 
an outlet in the sea, 
after expanding into 
a narrow lake skirted 
on the east side bv 
a low range of mio- 
cene limestone. Be- 
yond the embouchure 
of these streams the 
Eagle's Nest and the 
Sentinel Rocks stand 
like guardians of the 
coast, which maintains 
the same rusjeed 
aspect to Moonlight 
Head; at the back of 
which the Latrobe 

Range recedes in a north-easterly direction. The country inland has been very imperfectly 
explored owing to the difficulties it presents, for it is in places so heavily timbered, and 
there is such a tangled mass of under-wood to obstruct the tourist, that the most adven- 




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376 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



turous lover of the picturesque is baffled in his efforts to penetrate it. Deep ravines 
separate ranges so precipitous by such narrow intervals, that a bridge four or five hun- 
dred feet long would serve to unite the summits of opposite hills. The trees not 

unfrequently attain an 



altitude of three iiun- 
dred feet, and rise in 
their columnar majesty 
as high as one hundred 
feet before they throw 
out their first branch. 
At the bottom of these 
chasms springs of de- 
liciously pure and icily 
cold water ripple and 
bubble beneath the 
overarchincr fronds of 
motionless tree-ferns ; 
the soil is completely 
hidden by the matted 
herbage, intermingled 
with which are fantas- 
tic creepers and para- 
sites — shrubs which 
distil an aromatic odour 
on the air, and others 

which are garnished at 

• 
particular seasons of 

the year, and notably 
towards the end of the 
summer, with lustrous 
berries — white, crim- 
son, purple and a deli- 
cate amber — the fruit 
of the Exocarpiis ai- 
pressifoniius, the A7'i- 
slotelia pcdinicniaris 
and the Drymophila 
cyanocai'pa of botanists, 

sylvan ornaments upon which, perhaps, more homely names will hereafter be bestowed. 
After passing a bold projection which constitutes the wave-washed buttress of the 
range just described, and has received the descriptive epithet of Gable, the coast begins 
to trend steadily towards the north-west, the high lands visible from the water consisting 
of heathy plateaux and grass-tree plains about five hundred feet above the level of the 
sea. Some two miles beyond Moonlight Head a change occurs in the formation of such 




CAPE NKL.SU\. 



ft 



ft 




CAPE SCHANK. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 2,77 

cliffs as present themselves, and the mesozoic sandstone finally disappears. At Point 
Ronald the River Gellibrand empties its waters into the Pacific ; the coast is generally 
depressed, and the only indentation of any importance is the estuary known as Curdie's 
Inlet, which receives a river of the same name, both of them deriving their appellation 
from an early settler. Just beyond this inlet is the Bay of Martyrs, with which 
tradition associates the murder of several white people by the natives. 

The only conspicuous landmarks which attract the eye as the voyager skirts the 
coast are Flaxman's Hill and Point Buttress. Just before reaching the flourishing sea- 
port town of Warrnambool, is perceived the outfall of the Hopkins River, which, taking 
its rise in the Great Dividing Range, a hundred miles distant as the crow flies, 
absorbs an immense number of affluents in its tortuous course. The coast curves round 
somewhat at Warrnambool and thus forms a pretty bay, and a breakwater is in course 
of construction which will shelter it from the violence of the south-westerly gales and seas. 

From a geological point of view, the whole of the coast from this point westward 
as far as the emdotcc/inre of the Shaw and Eumeralla Rivers at Yambuk, a distance of 
something like forty miles, is highly interesting, because over the whole of this tract of 
country a stream of lava must have flowed, projected from the then active volcano of 
Mount Rouse, thirty-six miles inland. Belfast, or Port Fairy, as it was formerly called, 
which lies midway between these points, was formed of basalt thus ejected ; while the 
indurated tufas of Tower Hill, in its immediate neighbourhood, are found to have been 
originally composed of ashes, red-hot stone of a vitreous structure, dust and vapour. 

Three distinct coast-lines are traceable hereabouts, with limestone bluffs running from 
east to west for a distance of six or seven miles, while in a marshy flat on the right 
bank of the River Moyne, which flows into the sea at Belfast, shafts, which have been 
sunk for wells, have bottomed on the original sea-bed, plentifully strewn with shells. 
Two small islands guard the entrance to the harbour, and just behind the town the 
waters of the Moyne, after having formed the Tower Hill Swamp, expand into a lagoon 
somewhat resembling a boomerang in shape. 

Five miles westward is the entrance of Portland Bay, the scene of the earliest 
settlement in Victoria, although long before the landing of the Hentys it had been 
often visited by ships engaged in the capture of whales ; and it is remarkable that the 
contour of the Bay strikingly resembles that of the head and shoulders of one of these 
leviathans of the deep, with its nose resting on what is known as Whaler Point. Sixty 
or seventy years ago "schools" of these sociable creatures used to visit Portland Bay 
at certain periods of the year, and as this was soon discovered by the hardy adven- 
turers engaged in their pursuit, the place was selected as a whaling-station, and at 
various " points of vantage " lookouts were established ; one of these, as Mr. Richmond 
Henty tells us, having been stationed at the Light-house Point, another at the Whalers' 
Bluff, and a third at a spot seven miles north from Portland known as the " Convincing 
Ground." The writer who has just been quoted states that he has seen as many as 
thirty whales at a time spouting in the waters of the Bay, and " rubbing their huge 
bodies on the sandy bottom in order to clear away the barnacles which clung to them." 

To-day the whales have pretty well disappeared from this part of the coast, and 
instead of nineteen or twenty per annum being captured — as when the Hentys reaped 



378 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

the harvest both of sea and land — the apparition of a solitary whale in Portland Bay 
is a phenomenon which excites a powerful sensation in the district. The Bay itself is 
named after the Duke of Portland ; it is upwards of thirty miles wide at the entrance, 
while its greatest indentation is between five and six miles from the chord of the 
irregular arc formed by the coast. This consists chiefly of sandy hillocks, and the 
country inland is densely-timbered, with occasional flat patches and swamps. Eighteen 
miles from the coast a mass of basalt lifts itself one hundred and fifty feet above the 
level of the sea which welters round its base ; it is exactly bisected by the one 
hundred and forty-second meridian of east longitude, and is familiar to all mariners as 
Lady Julia Percy Island. 

From its isolation and its difficulties of access this huge pillar, fissured and grooved 
by the never-ceasing action of the elements, and perforated with caverns excavated by 
the restless sea, has been selected by the gregarious seal as a place of sojourn during 
two periods of the year. Hither these aquatic mammals resort by hundreds, recalling to 
mind Poseidon's flock, and the passage in the " Odyssey " descriptive of old Proteus, as 
the herdsman of that strange assemblage, classing them in groups of five. Here these 
gentle, timid creatures, with such a curiously human look in their soft brown eyes, and 
with such preternaturally acute senses of hearing and of vision, lie basking in the sun, 
and living in perfect amity with such of the sea-fowl as make their nesting-places on 
the rocks. Each family selects and appropriates its own exclusive little bit of territory, 
and the mother brings forth her young upon a couch of sea-weed, or other marine 
plants. Nothing can exceed the tenderness of the affection or the depth of the solicitude 
which she exhibits for her offspring. This comes into the world fully developed and 
covered with a thick soft fleece which prevents it from taking to the water. In a 
short time this is exchanged for its future coat, and the grotesque little seal — with its 
dog's "head, its cat's muzzle, its short arms terminating in fins that look like hands 
arrested in process of development, its valvular nostrils, its cropped ears and its soft 
flute-like voice — is conducted to the sea, where it receives its first lesson in swimming 
and diving from its watchful parent, who seems to derive as much amusement from its 
gambols as human beings do from the performances of a company of trained athletes. 
But, in general, the seals on Lady Julia Percy Island are but little disposed to bodily 
exercise. Their delight is rather that of the Laureate's " Lotos Eaters." : — 

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, 
And tender curving lines of creamy spray • 
To lend their hearts and spirits wholly 
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy. 

At the western extremity of Portland Bay — which is admirably sheltered from the 

gales on this side, although exposed to those which blow from the south-east — is the 

bold headland fronted by the little Lawrence Island, and known as Point Danger, 

whence the cliffs curve round to the rugged promontory named after Sir William 

Evans. From the summit of this headland a noble and extensive prospect is obtained, 

and one that varies amazingly with the season and the weather. In the calm and 

brightness of a midsummer afternoon, when the clif? expands its "broad bright side 

beneath the broad bright sun; " " the lazy sea-weed glistens in the light ; the lazy sea-fowl 

dry their steaming wings ; the lazy swells creep whispering up the ledge and sink again." 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



379 




^iS*' 



-:vifa?sfei 



Sa^*»J 



THl': CJUASt AT CAPE liKIDGEWATER, 




In one direction Cape Nelson lifts its rugged 
outline against the western sky, while in another 
the eye takes in the graceful sweep of the Bay, 
with Percy Island breaking the unwrinkled level 
of the slumbering sea to the eastward, the Law- 
rence Rocks, only two miles off, serving as a 

foreground. The far-distant line of the horizon is almost undistinguishable in colour from 
the sky which bends down to it, and the whole scene is suggestive of drowsy languor 
and dreamy reverie. 

Nelson Bay, shaped like a sickle, has Cape Nelson for its heft, and the cliffs, with 
high land behind them, heavily-timbered in part, and in part covered with scrub, maintain 
the same rugged character from point to point. Upon a platform of rock jutting out 
into the ocean, like a vast bastion reared by Titanic might, stands the light-house, over- 
looking a wide expanse of sea ; and, beneath that lofty ledge, there is 

A belt of dark-red storm-beaten crags, which grimly face 

The baffled billows that lie ever panting at their feet, 

Or gurgling in black-throated caves where still they moan and beat. 

On the western side of this peninsula, the coast-line bends backward slightly to the 
east, and the land dips downward to a semicircular ridge of sandy hummocks which 
extend along the margin of Bridgewater Bay to a point almost exactly opposite to that 
at which they have commenced, where a broader promontory opposes another fortress of 
basaltic rocks to the impetuous and tempestuous seas, which come surging up from the 
south-west under stress of foul weather. Bridgewater Bay is about six miles wide, but 
its land-margin is nowhere more than two miles from the open ocean. The headland, 
of which Cape Bridgewater is the south-eastern extremity, is barely a mile across at its 
neck or junction with the main-land, and it rises nearly four hundred and fifty feet 
above the level of the sea, at what may be called its point of greatest resistance to 
the waves. .Some of the inost romantic coast-scenery in Victoria is to be found in this 
locality, and to see it under its most impre.ssive and imposing aspect, it should be 
visited when the summit of the huge blufT is being swept by the skirts of the thunder- 
cloud, and the tumultuous sea is flinging itself with all its might against the dark 
masses of immovable rock which forms its base ; while " in many a spire the pyramid 



38o 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



billows, with white points of brine, on the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine as 
piercing the sky from the floor of the sea." 

At such a time the spectator is awed by the savage grandeur of the scene, which 
is terrible in its sublimity, and conveys an overwhelming sense of the tremendous power 
of the forces of Nature, and of the relative insignificance of the feeble observer, who 
staggers under the 
shock of the fierce 
wind which comes 
raging up from the 
icy South, and feels 
the very earth be- 
neath his feet shud- 
dering as the waves 
leap at it as if in 
a frenzy of ungo- 
vernable passion. 
Then, too, the re- 
sounding sea comes 





THE WATERY CAVE. 

up with a rush and a roar 
through a blow-hole in the 
cliff, and sends a column of 
water, crowned with a wreath 
of snow-white foam, high into 
the air; and the caves which 
have been hollowed out of 
the solid rock, as if by the 
labour of human hands, are 
transformed into seething 
chauldrons ; while the boom 
of the ocean, the deep diapa- 
son of the thunder, and the 
dissonant shrieking and howl- 
ing of the gale are heard far 
inland, and people listening 
to the elemental discord in comfort and security by their own firesides, put up a silent 
prayer for those who are in peril on the sea. But in the halcyon days of summer, 
when no breath of air is stirring on sea or shore, and the faint ebb and flow of the 



THE GRAND CAVE. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 381 

tide resemble in their soft regularity the pulse of a sleeping child ; when a hot haze 
settles down upon the scarcely definable horizon, and the hills inland lose the ordinary 
sharpness of their outline by reason of the veil of vapour which softens their colour 
and confuses their bulk ; Cape Bridgewater — no longer the grim and austere buttress 
against the encroaching waves " that lifted its awful form " above them when they were 
lashing themselves into foam against its massive escarpment, and " lacing the black 
rocks with a thousand snowy streams" — seems to bask in the warm sunshine, and to be 
enveloped in an atmosphere of peace and serenity ; while its caves, which are only 
accessible when the sea is calm, are delightfully cool and shadowy by comparison with 
tlie dazzling glare of the water, and the heat that radiates from the land. What is 
known as " The Watery Cave " is just the sort of place where Stephano, in the " Tem- 
pest," would have hidden the butt of sack which he rescued from the wreck, and 
Caliban would have chosen for a hiding-place when he had done anything to subject 
him to the displeasure of his sovereign lord and master. 

The coast from Cape Bridgewater to the mouth of the Glenelg trends in a north- 
westerly direction. The country is of an undulating character ; hummocks of sand, marshes 
and diminutive lakes of fresh and salt water, with a background of high land, for the 
most part heavily-timbered, constituting its leading features. 

Mountains. 

The most conspicuous feature of the mountain scenery of Victoria is an undulating 
and devious spine, commencing at the eastern boundary of the colony, near some of the 
sources of the Snowy River, dipping down into the valley of the Mitchell, then making 
its re-appearance five and twenty miles to the northward, and curving round, like a bow, 
to Kilmore, whence it stretches in a westerly direction to Mount Ararat, where it throws 
out a few spurs and then stops short in face of the massive ranges which there run 
from north to south. Upon the southern slopes rise the numerous rivers which discharge 
their waters into the sea, while the northern flanks supply the various affluents of the 
Murray. But in no case does the highest peak attain a loftier elevation than six thou- 
sand one hundred feet above sea-level, althoufjh this altitude is exceeded in two instances 
by spurs thrown off from the main or Great Dividing Range. These spurs are of 
remarkable complexity in the eastern counties of the colony, in some of which (as, for 
example, in Benambra, Tambo, Dargo, the north-western part of Croajingolong, Bogong, 
the southern half of Delatite, Wonnangatta and Evelyn), the area of country occupied 
by labyrinthine ranges probably exceeds that of the valleys and lowlands comprehended 
within their limits. In many instances the mountains grouped together, independently of 
the dorsal range, resemble in shape an octopus. From a central eminence between four 
and five thousand feet in height, as at Mount Baldhead, Mount Bindi and Mount 
Bowen, limbs are thrown out towards all points of the compass, terminating generally in 
a bold declivity. Occasionally an isolated range will wriggle, snake-like, for a distance 
of thirty or forty miles through an otherwise open country. At other times a mountain 
chain will protrude short spurs, or foot-hills, at almost regular intervals, like the feet of 
a caterpillar, to which its irregular contour will offer a certain fantastic and exaggerated 
resemblance. Strictly speaking the Great Dividing Range is merely a continuation, or 



382 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 




THE NORTHERN FACE OF 
MOUNT BOGONG. 



extension, of that which runs clown 
the whole of the Australian Continent 
from Cape York to Forest Hill, at which point it 
is deflected to the south-westward, so as still to 
maintain, in the direction it assumes, that paral- 
lelism to the coast which it has observed in its 
previous course. At Mount Baw Baw it appears to 
send out a southerly tier of equal magnitude and 
altitude to that which constitutes its western exten- 
sion, and this stretches to the sea-coast, and re-appears on the island of Tasmania. 
Entering the colony at Forest Hill, the Great Dividing Range sweeps round in a 
semicircle to the peak, six thousand and twenty-five feet high, known as the Cobberas, 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 383 

whence it pursues a serpentine course, under the name of the Bowen Ranges, until it 
reaches its most southerly point in the amphitheatre where the Mitta Mitta River 
gathers together the springs which form its source. Southward, a remarkable offset 
shoots out, about ten miles in length, with Notch Hill (over- four thousand six hundred 
feet in height) — half-way between the main system — and Mount Baldhead (four thousand 
five hundred and seven feet), as its points of greatest elevation. Vxom this, as from a 
ganglion, radiate in all directions subsidiary ranges, which in their ramifications resemble 
the distribution of the nerves in the human body. The Great Divide, doubling back to 
the north, reaches its greatest altitude at Mount Hotham (over four thousand feet), 
which is another ganglion, sending forth its plexus to the north. The Barry Mountains, 
running almost in a straight line due west, serve as a connecting link between Mount 
Hotham and Mount Howitt (over five thousand seven hundred feet), above which the 
main range bends round to the south, resuming its westerly course at Mount Selma ; 
and pursues it thence, with numerous fluctuations, until it dips into a marshy plain a 
few miles beyond Ararat, at the western extremity of which the Grampians, the Serra 
and Victoria Ranges, runnmg from north to south, constitute an independent system. 

For picturesque variety the Bogong Range can scarcely be surpassed, even in the 
Alpine region to which it belongs, teeming as it does with lofty peaks and softly- 
rounded domes, solitary heights which no human foot has trodden from the foundation 
of the world, and deep ravines and moist valleys, with springs and streams which main- 
tain a perpetual verdure by their never-failing water. During the winter months the 
summits of the higher mountains are clothed in robes of dazzling snow, stainless as an 
infant's soul, which glitter like helmets and cuirasses of plated silver in the sunlight, 
and have a weird wan beauty that has something spectral and eerie in it when the 
moon touches them with a pallid lustre. They impress the mind less, perhaps, by 
majesty of form than by magnitude of substance. A chain seventy miles in length, and 
culminating in a peak attaining the elevation of six thousand five hundred and eight 
feet, sends out lateral ranges to the eastward from fifteen to twenty miles in extension, 
numbering its spurs by hundreds, and giving birth to innumerable water-sources, swollen 
to the dimensions of rivers directly the snow begins to melt at the beginning of the 
summer ; and if, as has been said, " loveliness of colour, perfection of form, endlessness 
of change and wonderfulness of structure are precious to all undiseased human minds," 
we may find them all combined in this lonely and lovely district. Under all the vicissi- 
tudes of the season, and in all hours of the day, the colour of the mountains prefers 
an indisputable claim upon the admiration. Under some aspects it is an intense purple, 
and there is a suggestion in it of softness and smoothness of texture, as if the hills 
were apparelled in sumptuous velvet or sheeny plush ; at other times the hue is a 
turquoise blue, variegated in the shadowy recesses by a deep emerald green. Again, the 
lofty landscape will be enveloped in a filmy veil of vapour, very tender in tone, and 
analogous in tint to the first reek of a peat fire, as it issues in spiral wreaths from the 
chimney of a highland shieling when the braes are purple with the changing heather. 
As to form, the variety is endless, and the beautiful curves of the flowing lines are 
charmingly broken in upon and diversified by sharp peaks, by granitic pinnacles, and by 
the acute points of broad-based pyramids. Not only so, but at the very summit of the 



384 



♦ A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



o 
o 

H 

;-3 



Bogong Ranges, as is the case 
also in the Dargo Ranges, 
which run parallel to them, 
there are grassy plains of 
considerable extent, from 
four to six thousand feet 
above the level of the sea, 
undulating in surface and not 
altogether bare of timber. 
From these lofty plateaux 
the descent into the valleys 
beneath is precipitous, tim- 
bered thickly in some places, 
and clothed with a dense 
scrub in others. The struc- 
ture of these mountains is 
full of interest to the geo- 
logist. According to the 
careful study of the district 
made by Alfred W. Howitt, 
the explorer (who worthily 
sustains the good name he 
has inherited from William 
and Mary Howitt), the bed- 
rock is composed of lower 
silurian shales and sand- 
stones, with metamorphic 
schists of granites. Above 
these occur the gravels, sands 
and clays deposited there in 
the miocene age, overlying 
which are beds of lava, 
constituting the plains pre- 
viously spoken of, the highest 
peaks consisting of paliEOzoic 
rocks. 'ioxwQ. o{ \\\^ plateaux 
are described as presenting 
the appearance of having 
been "paved with five-sided 
blocks of stone, and in some 
of the mountain sides, where 
land-slips have taken place, are acres covered with jumbled heaps of five-sided logs of 
basalt." As the thickness of the volcanic outflow amounts in some places to seven hun- 
dred feet, it is reasonably concluded that this could not have been poured forth in a 







r. 






TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



385 



single stream. Up to the present time no extinct craters have been discovered in this 
mountainous region, which has been only partially explored, and Mr, Hewitt believes they 
will have to be sought for in the country to the north and north-west of the highlands 
of Bogong and Dargo. Many of the creeks and gullies draining the plateaux are repre- 
sented to be auriferous, but the gold appears to be thinly distributed over so wide an 
area as to preclude its being mined, except on a large scale. 

As the tourist toils laboriously to the summit of one of the more accessible of these 
mountains in a secluded portion of the range, amidst the awful silence of a forest 
peopled with patriarchal trees, he is oppressed by a feeling of solitude which 




MOUNT FEATHERTOi-. 



has in it something of solemnity. He stands face to face, moreover, with an antiquity 
which is almost incalculable. Each of the sylvan giants, which dwarf his own stature to 
that of a pigmy, belongs to an epoch so remote that all dynasties, all political institu- 
tions, all living literatures and all social organizations seem to be things of yesterday in 
comparison. When these trees were self-sown our savage ancestors were clothed in skins, 
were feeding on roots, were hoveling in caves. For tens of thousands of times did the 
sun rise and set, the moon wax and wane, the stars come forth in glittering myriads 
after night-fall ; and all the beautiful processes of Nature went on, in their majestic 
order and regularity, unhelped and unhindered by man. Silently the young tree put 
forth its tender germ ; silently the sapling lifted itself upward to the light ; and silently, 
century after century, the aspiring column rose among its fellows, until, attaining an 



386 



A USTRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



altitude of three hundred feet or more, it spread its crown of foliage to the sun, and 
received through all the changing seasons the messages uttered, now in soft murmuring 
whispers, and now in accents of passionate fury, by the winds. 

In older, or should we not say in younger, countries all sorts of human associations 
are connected with the mountain and the forest. Each has its history and its legends. 
The former may be vaster or more terrible in Europe, in Northern India and in South 
America, but neither the highest aiguilles of the Alps, nor .the sublime heights of the 
Himalayas, nor the snowy summits of the Andes are _ dissevered from human interest 
like the unexplored ranges of Australia. So also with the forests of Europe, and of 
Asia more particularly. The cedars of Lebanon carry us back to the days of Solomon ; 
the sacred fig of the Hindoo village has been the place of refuge and of prayer for 
generation after generation of the native worshippers of Brahma ; angels are described as 
having visited Abraham under the trees in the Valley of Mamre ; Alexander the Great 
requested that he might be buried in the forests of Libya ; the Fountain of Egeria 
flowed from a consecrated wood in the Roman Campagna ; it was to the forest of 
Dodona that the two black doves flew when they forsook the shrine of the Theban 
Jupiter; the woods of Britain and of Gaul are haunted by memories of Druids and 
Druidesses, and recall the exploits of famous outlaws ; while the genius of Shakespeare has 
invested two forests with undying interest by associating them with such exquisite creations 
as those which speak to us in "As You Like It" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." 

But the mountains and woods of Australia have not been thus consecrated. They 
belong to the infancy of the world. Their virgin solitudes, in numberless instances, have 
never been penetrated by the foot even of the black man. To plunge into the forest, 
and to scale the summit of the wooded range, is like receiving admission into the inner- 
most sanctuary of Nature. She has secluded these mysterious regions from the human 
eye ever since the dawn of creation. But for the rustle of a lizard in the grass ; but 
for the occasional apparition of a bird glancing across the pillared aisles of the stupen- 
dous cathedral which lifts its vaulted roof of foliage so high overhead ; but for the 
chiming of an unseen spring, fretting and chafing against the mossy boulders which 
impede its downward course ; and but for a faint and far-off stir, a sort of muffled 
music in the air, .when the wind plays with the leaves which loftily overarch the 
difficult path, the traveller would be enveloped by absolute stillness, to which, after a time, 
he is so accustomed and reconciled that the ear becomes preternaturally sensitive to sound, 
and any violent impact upon it, like the firing of a gun, occasions almost a feeling of pain. 

But in the winter season all is changed. Instead of the silence and serenity of the 
long calm days of January and February — when the very air seems to have fallen 
asleep, and the sun flames across a cloudless sky as lustrous as burnished silver, " shining 
on, shining on, by no shadow made tender " ; when the motionless leaves of the trees 
in the forest appear as if they were ready to crackle with the heat ; and when the 
plains below shimmer and quiver in the fierce light of the almost vertical luminary, and 
a hot haze envelopes the distant ranges, chequered in places by volumes of white smoke 
arising from bush-fire.s — gloom and tumult invade the landscape ; murmuring runnels are 
transformed into roaring torrents ; voluminous clouds, sullen and sombre in aspect, drift 
inland, shrouding the rugged summits of the highest mountains in an atmosphere of 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 387 

vapov:r, and investing them with an air of mystery. For days, and even weeks together, 
they are completely effaced — blotted out by the opaque masses of rain-cloud rolling up 
their massive sides and resembling emanations from the surface of some vast chauldron, 
or the mists and exhalations which Faust describes as arising from the deepest abysses 
of the Brocken : and when the short tempestuous day has yielded to the night, the 
scene recalls that so vividly depicted by an English poet : — 

The reeling clouds 
Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet 
Which master to obey: wliile rising slow. 
Blank, in the leaden-coloured east, the moon 
Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns. 
Seen through the turbid fluctuating air. 
The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray ; 
Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom, 
And long behind them trail the whitening blaze. 

By night or by day the transitory glimpses afforded of these huge ranges impress one 
with a deeper feeling, not only of their bulk and magnitude, but of their elevatipn, for 
they loom through the mist, or reveal themselves with imposing effect when the clouds 
are suddenly riven asunder, with an augmentation of their mass attributable to the 
vapoury medium which interposes itself between them and the eye of the spectator. Other 
transformations occur in the aspect of these ranges after an interval of cold clear weather, 
at the same period of the year, when the free-selector on the distant plains, issuing 
from the door of his hut in the early morning, sees the crests of the far-stretching mass 
sharply outlined against a steel-blue sky, wearing a robe of spotless white, woven by the 
deft and subtle fincjers of the frost durin<r the stillness of the nicrht, out of the wreaths 
of vapour which had been drifting along the ridges when the darkness fell upon them 
a few hours before. 

A radial line of thirty miles drawn from Mount Bogong would comprehend within 
its circumference, with one exception, the whole of the loftiest peaks in Victoria ; as, for 
example, Towanga (four thousand one hundred and sixty-one feet), The Buffalo (five thou- 
sand six hundred and forty-five feet), Feathertop (six thousand three hundred and three 
feet), Fainter (six thousand one hundred and sixty feet), Hotham (six thousand one 
hundred feet). Cope (six thousand and fifteen feet), Wills (five thousand seven hundred 
and fifty-eight feet), Tambo (four thousand seven hundred feet), Benambra (four thousand 
eight hundred and fifty feet), and The Twins (five thousand five hundred and seventy- 
five feet). The exception is Mount Cobberas (which lies about fifty miles, as the crow 
flies, due east of Mount Bogong), the monarch of the Victorian mountains, being six 
thousand five hundred and eight feet above the sea-level. 

The geological formations of this district, as mapped out and explained by Mr. 
Reginald A. F. Murray, are few in number, and so simple as to render them intelligible 
to the non-scientific reader : — " Lower silurian slates, shales and sandstones, and metamor- 
phic schists and granites form the bed-rock of the whole. This bed-rock is overlaid in 
parts by gravels, sands and clays, whose fossil flora indicate them to be of miocene or 
middle tertiary age; and, wherever found, these are covered by varying thicknesses of 
lava, forming the plateaux or high plains already referred to " : that is to say, the 
Bogong and Dargo highlands, consisting of open, undulating plains and moors, from four 



388 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

to six thousand feet above the sea-level, and smaller ones which do not attain more 
than half that elevation. " The highest peaks consist of the palaeozoic rocks, which are 
also plainly exposed in all the deeper rivers and creeks that intersect the plateaux and 
separate them from one another. These water-courses contain drifts and gravels of post 
tertiary age, made up of the materials denuded from the bed-rock, the middle tertiary 
beds and the basalts. 

"The geological history of the district, deduced from the above data, is that in 
middle tertiary times the beds of the water-courses were at a far higher relative eleva- 
tion than those of the present day ; that flows of lava took place which filled in the 
valleys of the period ; and that the present rivers then commenced to cut their way, 
and have, during long ages, eroded their valleys as they now exist, sometimes parallel 
with, and sometimes across, the ancient river-beds." There is every reason to believe that 
the flow of lava from the active volcanoes of a remote epoch was confined to the 
narrow valleys, which are so characteristic of this romantic region. These are, in some 
instances, not more than a mile and rarely more than two miles wide, measuring from 
ridge to ridge of the ranges by which they are flanked. 

This is the case with the hollow, lying between the parallel spurs that resemble in 
shape the prongs of a tuning-fork, thrown out from Mount Cobbler (five thousand three 
hundred and forty-two feet), and running in a straight line due north for a distance of 
sixteen miles. Each depression is the bed of a creek or river flowing down its centre, 
and fed by a hundred tributaries taking their rise in the wooded heights above. Such 
are the sources of the streams which empty themselves directly into the Pacific, or 
discharge their waters into the Gippsland Lakes, on the one side of the Great Divide, 
or contribute to swell the volume of the Murray, by means of the Mitta Mitta, the 
Ovens and the Goulburn, on the other. 

Another striking bifurcation occurs at Mount St. Bernard, which is the diverging 
point of two important ranges, both taking a northerly direction, the shorter offset 
trending somewhat to the westward for eight miles, until it reaches Growler's Hill, when 
it again divides and throws out two branches, each of them terminating about twelve 
miles from its starting-point. The other and longer arm is about thirty-five miles in 
length, with diverging spurs innumerable on both sides. Its most conspicuous peaks and 
pinnacles are Mount Hotham and Mount Feathertop. The latter derives its appellation 
from the resemblance which its outline presents — as seen from the lofty plateaux known 
as the Baw Baw, Precipice and Horsehair Plains — to the graceful curve of an ostrich- 
feather. These table-lands have been partially explored by adventurous gold-seekers, who 
have discovered the precious metal in payable quantities among the gravels which seem 
to have formed the beds of ancient rivers, flowing, in some instances, a thousand feet 
above the level of the streams which are now marked on the map. 

Mr. Alfred W. Howitt, after a careful and prolonged investigation of the geological 
structure of North Gippsland, has been led to make the following statement : — " That 
the general land surface of Victoria probably stood in miocene times some eight hundred 
feet lower in respect to the sea-level than it now does, and as the elevation and 
depression of the land seems to have been on the whole equal over large tracts in 
Southern Australia, we may conclude that the miocene Dargo flowed at least two 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



389 



thousand feet above the sea-level. This view would indicate a much warmer climate, 
and would agree with conclusions as to temperature to be drawn from the marine fauna 
of the mioccne limestone of Bairnsdale." 

Mount Feathertop is one of a cluster of eight peaks, three of them unnamed, none 
of which is less than five thousand eight hundred feet above the sea-level, nor more 
than five miles distant from the centre of the Bogong High Plains ; but it is extremely 




MOUNT ABRUPT. 



probable that other eminences quite as lofty as the highest of these remain undiscovered in 
this intricate labyrinth of mountainous country, so much of which awaits thorough exploration. 
Next in importance to this net-work of ranges, which covers the greater part of an 
area one hundred and sixteen miles long and one hundred and twenty miles broad, 
those in the counties of Evelyn, Anglesey and Mornington, are entitled to take rank, 
although none' of them attains the elevation of the mountains previously referred to. 
Strictly speaking they form part of one system, and are laterals thrown off from the 
Great Divide ; Mount St. Leonard, Mount Monda, Mount Juliet and Mount Haw Haw 
being the most prominent of the culminating points in this region, which, so far as the 
county of Evelyn is concerned, contains a much smaller proportion of level country than 
of densely-timbered mountain chains, dipping abruptly down into narrow valleys, affording 
barely space enough for a brawling stream to groove a channel. Here and there, however, 
a cup-like hollow may be found, with room sufficient for the formation of an Alpine 
village, one thousand five hundred or two thousand feet above the level of the sea, 
" remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," with the purple mountains folding it in their 



390 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

cold embrace, and a purling brook of the purest water gliding past cottage gardens 
which never lose their verdure. A way-side inn with its broad verandah, where the local 
gossips gather after the labours of the day are over ; a wheelwright's shop, where the 
roaring of the forge is a pleasant thing to listen to, and the red glare of the flames, 
is comforting to look at on a chilly winter evening ; a general store with a highly 
miscellaneous stock of merchandise ; a State school of limited dimensions, a dozen or 
two of weather-board cottages, form the constituents of this isolated hamlet ; but it is 
linked with the larger life and the restless activities of the metropolis, seventy or eighty 
miles distant, by a daily coach, the morning departure and evening arrival of which 
occasion a momentary ripple upon the otherwise stagnant mill-pond of the monotonous 
lives led by these secluded folk : after which gentle excitement the place relapses into 
its habitual repose. 

A curious feature of the Great Dividing Range is that due north of Port Phillip 
Bay it recedes inland, where its course bears a general resemblance to the curvature of 
that inlet. The general altitude of the mountains diminishes as they approach the west, 
and Mount Macedon, although so conspicuous by its height and bulk, does not attain 
a greater eminence than three thousand three hundred and twenty-four feet. Sixteen 
miles to the westward of it the range throws off a northern spur about twenty-five 
miles in length, terminating just beyond Sandhurst. On each side of the main range 
are numerous detached hills, some of them between two thousand four hundred and two 
thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, and their complete Isolation — as In the 
cases of Mounts Blackwood, Franklin, Warrenhelp and Bunlnyong — gives them an 
imposing character. Beyond Lexton, where the range begins to be known as the 
Pyrenees, the hills have combined to form a beautiful amphitheatre, triangular In shape, 
and less than a mile across in its widest part. The Sugarloaf forms Its apex, and In 
the green hollow of this romantic spot the waters of the Avoca take their rise and 
find an outlet to the north. Near Ararat the Pyrenees, after making a sharp bend to 
the north-west, and an equally abrupt detour to the south-west, branch off Into two 
arms, and then come to an end. One of these Is known as the Black Range, and the 
other reaches an altitude of two thousand and twenty feet at Mount Ararat. 

Little more than a mile from the farthest outpost of the southern limit, and 
separated from it by a marsh, lies the most easterly spur of the Grampians, or Serra 
Range, in the midst of which the Rivers Wannon, Glenelg and WImmera take their 
rise. There is one main range, upwards of fifty miles In length and forty In breadth, 
with four subsidiary ranges, all having a meridional direction, and attaining their greatest 
elevation in Mount William, three thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven feet above 
the sea-level. The sedimentary rocks of which they are composed are estimated to cover 
an area of one thousand two hundred and twenty miles ; and these rocks for seven 
hundred and eighty miles are one vast mass of freestone of the purest quality. Some- 
thing like fifteen hundred feet of It are exposed In natural section ; for on the eastern 
face of the range there are majestic cliffs and massive escarpments rising as high as 
three thousand two hundred feet, in one place, above the level of the sea ; which one 
would almost expect to find flowing at their base ; and from it, indeed, they were originally 
upheaved. But now they lift themselves above billows of foliage, and overlook a 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



391 



pastoral landscape freshened by winding streams, and populous with flocks and herds ; 
while, in one secluded nook, a water-fall leaps rejoicingly down from a ledge of rock a 
hundred feet high to join the Wimmera on the northern plains. 

Thirty miles to the north-east of Mount Zero, which marks the termination of the 
Grampians in a northerly direction, there rises abruptly from the dead level of an exten- 
sive plain, abounding in miniature lakes, both salt and fresh — these lying sometimes 
almost side by side— a curiously fantastic mass of rock, one- thousand one hundred and 
and seventy-six feet in height, which has received the name of Mount Arapiles, In its 
horizontal laminations and vertical fissures, it resembles the stupendous foundation walls 




iwUNT ARAPlLKs. 



of some vast edifice planned and commenced by Titans, and then abandoned, leaving 
Nature to adorn the ruin, according to her gracious wont, by crowning its summit with 
forest-trees, and weaving a robe of foliage about its feet. A little to the northward of 
it, surmounting a wooded mound, is another columnar rock, but of very much smaller 
dimensions, with a cleft crest, whence it has derived the appellation of the Mitre Rock. 
Near by is a salt-water pool which has received the name of the Mitre Lake, and it 
stands midway between two sheets of water. Lake Natimuk and St. Mary's Lake, both 
of which are fresh. 

Northward of the Grampians and Mount Arapiles the country slopes gradually 
downward to the Murray, with scarcely a hill to break the monotonous level of the 
landscape, and the malice scrub commences within about seven miles from the Mitre Rock. 
In the sandy soil of the district the trees, from which it takes its name, thrive amidst 
the most discouraging circumstances, covering the ground so thickly in places as to form 



392 



A US TRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



a perfect jungle, interweaving their sombre foliage overhead, and having their stems 
interlaced at times by a species of wild vine, or liana, as supple as cordage when it is 
twining around them, and as rigid as a wire cable when it has got them well within its 
grip. Lowan, in which Mount Arapiles is situated, takes its name from a native bird, 
also variously entitled the brush turkey, the mallee pheasant and the mallee hen, the 

Alegapodiis Tumulus of 
naturalists. It is some- 
what larger than a 
good-sized fowl, and it 
lays its eggs, which are 
disproportionally large, 
in an artincial mound 
constructed by the co- 
operation of many pairs 
of birds, by whom they 
are annually enlarged 
and repaired. Some 
of these tumnli are 
fifteen feet high, with 
a like circumference ; 
but a larger one when 
measured was found to 
be no less than fifty yards round its base. They are entered by a funnel-like cavity 
at the top, and the eggs are laid six feet below the surface, each hen depositing one 
in a cavity twenty inches from its neighbours, and then covering it with soil and care- 
fully smoothing over the surface. The eggs are placed vertically, are laid during the 
night at intervals of several days, and are about the size of those of a goose. They are 
hatched by the heat of the soil in which they are placed ; but the malice hen is so 
shy, and at the same time so vigilant, that it is difficult to say whether the parent 
birds assist their young in escaping from the grave in which the eggs have been buried. 




\il.EE HENS NEST. 



Lakes. 
There are not less than a hundred lakes in Victoria, although many of them are of 
so limited an area, covering from two hundred to five hundred acres only, as scarcely 
to entitle them to such a designation. About twenty of them are salt — and these include 
some of the largest — while there are eight or ten whose waters are decidedly brackish. 
Some of these appear to be the relics of an inland sea, while others have been 
rendered saline by the reception of the salts washed into them from the soil of the 
land they drain. Elsewhere the craters of extinct volcanoes have been transformed into 
natural reservoirs, as remarkable for their depth as for their transparency and beauty of 
colour. There are only three lake-systems so called— that in South Gippsland, that in 
the counties of Granville, Hampden and Polwarth, and that to which Lakes Hindmarsh 
and Albacutya belong. The most remarkable of the whole is the one first mentioned ; 
it comprises Lake Wellington, Lake Victoria and Lake King, although the two latter 



TOPOGRAPHY OF VICTORIA. 



393 



are, to all intents and purposes, one sheet of water. But in the narrow strip of country 
which separates them from the sea, and which in some places is less than two miles 




THE GIPPSLAND LAKES. 



wide, a chain of salt-water lagoons skirts the Ninety-mile Beach for a distance of about 
fifty or sixty miles, the largest of which, entitled Lake Reeve, constitutes a kind of 
back-water in connection with Lake King and Lake Victoria. 

I5y the usual route from Melbourne, Lake Wellington is reached through one of its 
principal affluents, the River Latrobe, which begins to be navigable for steamers of 
shallow draft a short distance from Sale. The stream winds through belts of ti-tree 



394 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 

scrub and marshy pastures, in which nothing is seen but the ridgy backs of the cattle 
rising above the tall coarse herbage on either bank ; an