BY E. M. CLOWES ILLUSTRATED Heinemann logo LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1911 Copyright , London , 1911 , by William Heinemann...

This is not supposed to be a national or political history of Victoria.  When I was asked to write something about the country which has extended its hospitality to me, and given me bread and cheese—sometimes no cheese, it is true, and more often than not no butter, but still always bread, and an ever-increasing appetite—I must confess I felt frankly scared.  There is a very good, if somewhat vulgar, expression in use out here, which speaks of anyone who attempts what is beyond them as “biting o

The first landing in Victoria was purely involuntary, a vessel having been wrecked in 1797 on Furneaux Island, in Bass Strait, the supercargo, a man named Clarke, and two sailors—the only people saved out of a total of seventeen—making the Victorian shores, and by some incredible means reaching Sydney.  Six years later an attempt was made to colonize what was then known as Port Phillip, by means of a convict colony, and a penal expedition of nearly 400 persons, 300 of whom were convicts, were se

From the moment that the ship touches this shore—no, rather from the moment that the pilot boards her—a whiff of something, at once strange and stimulating, seems to fill one’s lungs and quicken one’s brain.  The Australian pilots are a notably fine race—the younger men, those who have been born in the country—the finest type, perhaps, that it has as yet produced, with a breezy optimism, an immense faith in the land of their birth, and true affection for the Old Country, their very love for and

When I was a girl I remember many times hearing my father say that he would rather mount a lady on a young, well-broken horse than on an old hunter; that they knew too much, that they had mastered the art of falling soft, and preferred their own way to that of their rider.  As a housekeeper, I know I would rather have an absolutely untaught young girl as a domestic than one who held her own views as to how everything was to be done; equally fearing and disliking any new innovation which might po

The working-man in Australia is being made a demigod of, with all sorts of frills added, so that the fact of his possessing feet of clay, like the rest of us, may be hidden, even from himself.   He does not really care about it all.  He wants—if he is a real working-man—to do his job, and smoke his pipe in peace, while all he asks for is fair play, or all he has asked for in the past; because now, like all spoilt children, he has come to a state of mind when he really does not know what he wants

Very few people of any social standing beyond a few college professors and doctors actually live in Melbourne.  But, still, it is thickly inhabited, and has a curious sublife of its own, quite distinct from that of the people who flock to it during business hours; returning again to their suburbs between five and six, only to reappear later, like flashing meteors, on their way to the theatre and supper at The Vienna or Paris Café.  The professors congregate for the most part round the University

During the first week I was in Melbourne I came across a notice in the daily paper among the police-court news, stating that “Percy So-and-So, aged two years and four months,” had been “arrested on the charge of being a neglected child.” “What a brutal country!” I thought.  “Can it be possible that any human being can be found so hard-hearted and inhuman as to condemn a helpless child to any form of punishment, because by some tragic fate it has missed both a mother’s love and a father’s care?” 

Melbourne is not a cosmopolitan city.  It neither lies in the direct route of globe-trotters, who will, indeed, often miss the whole of Australia and pass on to New Zealand or the Pacific Isles, nor does it possess many natural interests or curiosities.  It is a level-headed place, too, and, though it amuses itself well enough, it does not cater for that class of people who will search the world over for a new sensation or exotic pleasure.  If strangers come to Melbourne it is for the most part

Once I lived in a house where there was a dog kept named Turk, presumably a watch-dog, but only presumably so, for he would follow anybody, welcome anybody, and almost go into hysterics of joy at a word of favour even from the veriest sundowner.  At the gate-house of the railway crossing near by dwelt a fat old Irishwoman with a brood of children, one of whom, little Jack, a most lovable rascal of some seven or eight years, made a regular practice of stealing Turk, bringing him back after severa

People at home do not know the true meaning of the word “loneliness,” and we often hear English labourers and their wives talking of isolation, when there is a church and village only a couple of miles off, or other cottages and farms, at any rate, within walking distance of them.  Indeed, we are, in general, so used to living closely huddled together that we get scared when we are alone in any large open space, with no single sign of humanity, fenced and cultivated land or smoking chimney withi

Victoria , and, indeed, Australia as a whole, has been spoken of as the “Paradise of the working-man”—a paradise in which Melbourne, as the busiest and richest city in the Commonwealth takes the foremost place, this according to its people.  The inhabitants of Sydney think differently, so do those of Adelaide and Brisbane.  Yet, on the whole, I think Melbourne has the best reason for her proud boast.  Wages may not be higher than they are in Sydney, while they are certainly lower than they are i

Charles Dickens has created characters which will assuredly live for ever.  If he had invented real animals instead of imaginary people—who are much more real than many real people, because more clearly drawn—I would attribute to him all the strange beasts of Australia which, for the most part, are absurdly Pickwickian.  They are so clumsily and curiously formed, their expressions are so alert and inquisitive, their limbs are so oddly proportioned.  Indeed, I could never see a kangaroo without t

[232]   In Europe the density of the population, or number of persons to the square mile, is 112.58; in Australia it is 147. [298]   At the first colonization of Victoria, the number of blacks was estimated to amount to 15,000....