I knew nothing whatever of Australia when I rashly consented to marry a young man who had irrevocably bound himself to go and live there, and, moreover, to go within three months of the day on which the wild idea occurred to me. During the seven weeks or thereabouts of a bewildering engagement, the while I got together my modest trousseau, we hunted for information in local libraries, and from more or less instructed friends. The books were mostly old ones, the tales the same. Geoffrey Hamlyn wa

The story of a sea-voyage thirty years ago, if it could properly be included in this chronicle, might interest the young reader, born since the era of the sailing ship, and to whom therefore the true romance of ocean travel is unknown. To me, who, if I could cross the world to-morrow, would choose the most civilised steamer I could afford, the memory of the Hampshire on her maiden trip brings regret for beauty vanishing from the world, as the Pink Terraces of New Zealand have vanished, or the bi

It was not quite bush, to start with, because we travelled by railway to our immediate destination, and that was a substantial township set amongst substantial farms and stations, intersected by made roads. But on the way we had samples of typical country, between one stopping-place and another. First, there were the ugly, stony plains, with their far-apart stone fences, formed by simply piling the brown boulders, bound together by their own weight only, into walls of the required height. This d

We had to wait in lodgings for a few weeks, during which time we made acquaintance with the place and people. Our lodgings were very comfortable. Sitting-room and bedroom, with a door between, our other door opening upon a big plot of virgin bush, alive with magpies, whose exquisite carolling in the early hours of the day is the thing that I remember best. There is no bird-song in the world so fresh and cheery. I seldom hear it now, but when I do I am back again, in imagination, at breakfast nea

All my recollections of the first home, and the one succeeding it, embrace the figure of a friend who was virtually of the family while we lived in them. He has so long been dead that I may with propriety refer to him more fully than I can speak of his contemporaries yet living, and it is a particular pleasure to do so in view of his nationality and of the times in which I write. For he was a Dutchman—and everything, almost, that a man should be. If he did no good for himself in Australia—his bi

On the 26th of July 1871 we moved into our second home—not more than a mile or so from the first—Dik again helping us. The chance to get a little more breathing-space and elbow-room, much needed since we had become a family, fell to us through the death of our friend the police magistrate. That sad event left his widow with means too small to permit of her retaining her pretty home for a day after she was able to leave it. We took it from her, and lived in it for about four months—until G. was a

On the 1st of January 1872 G. ceased to be a curate. On the 4th—and with thankfulness, I must confess—we left W—— for our own first parish. It comes back to me, as if it were yesterday, the departure from Como. One of the numerous kind friends who seemed sorry to part with us lent us a roomy buggy, into which we packed many things besides ourselves—the small treasures of the house that we did not like to entrust to the waggons sent on before us with our modest stock of furniture. The last offeri

This parish, although sparsely populated, was enormous in size; it stretched out in one direction more than a hundred miles as the crow flies. And when G. went that way he rode with a fat valise on the saddle and did not return under a fortnight, during which time we were unable to communicate with each other. It was the nearest thing to being a missionary that he ever came to. There are roads and thriving townships along that route now; in our time it was the wildest Bush-track, about which lay

I often wonder what G. would have done if he had been a weakly man or an indifferent rider. There were lengthy periods during which he practically lived in the saddle, getting out of it merely for meals and sleep. For a time we kept records of the totals of miles covered per week or per year, but, these matters ceasing to be notable, we lost them long ago. And it is better not to trust even to his memory to reproduce them, for I am certain that no figure near the truth would be credited by the E

Sad indeed was the breaking-up of that pleasant home at Y——. It followed upon, and was a consequence of, the death of our little daughter, when she was nearly a year old. These are the times when the Bush dweller feels his geographical position most keenly—when he needs the best medical advice and cannot get it. I do not say that our dear old German doctor was not a good doctor in his way, for he was; but practically nothing had been added to his knowledge since he was young, and in this case he

We left B—— in 1877. The diocese of Ballarat had been carved out of that of Melbourne, hitherto bounded by the boundaries of the colony; and the knife had lopped off a portion of our parish, leaving only enough to support a "reader," who is supposed not to want anything to live on. We passed then into the new diocese. And, to begin with, we did a stupid thing—possibly two stupid things. G., after consultation with his bishop, accepted a living without seeing it. A charming photograph of the pars

The charms of solitude at "The Old Parsonage" were outweighed by its disadvantages when I became that miserable creature, the confirmed invalid. The fire danger which made me nervous in summer was bad for health; the silence and loneliness of the winters, when nobody came, were worse. My husband, of course, was much away from home; the servants lived in their detached house; and so good and capable were they that for a time—after the elder babies began to go with Miss C. to school—I saved the ex

I am not going to disgust the patient reader with sick-room talk. But certain facts connected with my hospital life bear directly upon the object of this book, which is to reflect in my trivial experiences the character of the country as modified by its circumstances from year to year. I had to pay £6, 6s. per week while an inmate of the house. This sum did not cover medicines or washing, but board and nursing only. The doctor who gave me chloroform three times charged me £5, 5s. on the first oc

Towards the end of May 1886—against professional advice, to which we opposed our private opinion that the best way to get well was to get rid of the homesick cravings that were beyond doctor's reach—I was transferred from my hospital bed to one in the house of a dear Melbourne friend, where I lay in all the luxury that love and money could provide, and with portions of family around me, for a few more weeks; until at last it was considered that I might make the long journey to my home in safety.

All I know of his breeding is that he had none. His mother, a drawing-room pet and the only acknowledged parent, was a little long-bodied, dainty bundle of silver-grey silk that swept the ground; he, fully twice her size and height, with a compact, sinewy frame and a close, wire-haired, rusty-black coat, was more in the style of the useful out-door terrier that loves a scrimmage in the street and is rough on rats—mere dog, in short, and a despicable animal from the fancier's point of view. But w

This is another chapter that some readers may like to skip. If talk about a dog is too trivial for those who do not care for dogs, talk about strikes and such politico-industrial matters—especially by one unlearned in the subject—is calculated to bore intolerably the person who merely seeks in these humble pages a little amusement for an idle hour. But our great strike, which in point of time belongs to this portion of my narrative, was part and parcel of my Australian life, and no picture of th

My experiences of life in Australia, long in time, have been narrow in space. Of the thirty years of this chronicle, not six months were spent outside Victoria. In earlier times I paid little visits to Albury, just over the border. We drove from Y—— in our first buggy, which was bought there, taking the babies to a house that was full of playmates for them, and where a couple more or less added nothing to the family cares. Looking out of my window one morning I realised why this was so. In a bac

In 1893 our long country life came to an end. For years we had been hankering after a Melbourne parish, and at times, I must confess, had done a little canvassing for the vote and interest of the influential, under the well-founded impression that Providence helps those who help themselves; but it is very hard, when once "out of it," as the country-clergy describe their case, to get in, and we had come to consider our chances of metropolitan preferment as about equal to that of the camel which w

The eighth home was quite an imposing house—for us—too much so for my taste and the resources of the moment, insomuch that I had to leave the furnishing of the drawing-room to a future day; but what an interesting time I had, with my paper-hangers and people! In a few days I had the walls—raw plaster and grubby at that—decorated and dry, and the floor-staining done, and the elementary necessaries of family life collected; so that when I, and the little daughter who had been with me, met our male

The thirty years covered by this chronicle came to an end with the nineteenth century and the history of these colonies as such. On the last day of 1900 I sat at my writing window to watch the drop of the time-ball that regulates all the Government clocks—the clocks which the morning papers had warned us to set our time-pieces by at 1 P.M. , so as not to be a second out, if we could help it, when the midnight hour should strike. I cannot describe the state of tension we were in, the sense of fat