Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria | Page 7

might have aspired to be a sort of tiny Dead Sea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernus came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the Bay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now show me that it must have reached still higher destinies.
EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-51.
"Will Fortune never come with both hands full?" --Second Part Henry IV.
"The weakest go to the wall." --Romeo and Juliet.
But "it's better to scheme than to slumber." --J. Brunton Stephens, Queensland.
"Sweet are the uses of adversity." --As You Like It.
When Fawkner, in August, 1835, following Batman's example of the previous May, organized and sent forth his party from Launceston to explore and colonize Port Phillip, his instruction was that they should squat down for a home only where there was adequate fresh water. When, in their cruising about to that end, the party entered the Yarra at the Bay's head, ascended its roundabout course, and found ample water to drink above "the Falls," they at once disembarked there, and there in consequence arose Melbourne. Fawkner, following in October, confirmed the choice, and with his characteristic energy commenced the work of colonization. The immediate needs decide many things "for better, for worse." A good many have since thought that this has been a costly and inconvenient site for the colony's capital, and that that of Williamstown, with its healthful level, like New York, might have been better, and, still better than either, Geelong, with its beautiful ready-made harbour, its immediate background of rich soil, and its direct access to all the superior capabilities of the west and north-west. But there Melbourne is, and in spite of all obstacles it is already the prominent city of the Southern Hemisphere, and Fawkner is justly its father. When Melbourne's father died, now a good many years ago, and with not a few of the admitted honours and merits of a long, laborious, and useful life, I sent authority to friends there to subscribe for me to the inevitable monument. But my offered money was never demanded, and therefore I fear that the living busy tide of such a host of sons has crowded out the memory of the dead parent.
A vision of earliest Melbourne rises before me. Allotment speculators were bound, within moderate time, to construct a "dwelling" on their purchase, and in some cases these were made with honest intention, as in the two adjacent half-acres of Mr. James Smith and Mr. Skene Craig in west Collins-street. But in most cases these coerced structures were only shams, which disappeared right early. The only "buildings" on a good many sections, that are now central and almost priceless, were post-and-rail fences, somewhat dilapidated at places by our license of jumping over them for a short diagonal to adjacent streets.
Let me try to recall the Melbourne of 1840, as it looked in that year, the year of my arrival. In the first place I must protest against the meagre view given some years ago in the "Illustrated London News", from a sketch by Mossman, an early colonist of my acquaintance, and copied into the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend, Miss Isabella Bird (now Mrs. Bishop). It may be true as far as it goes, but it is only the Western Market square, which had hardly one-thirtieth part of that year's Melbourne. At the close of 1840 there were between three and four thousand of population, although perhaps one-fourth of these, who had been recently shot out of emigrant ships, were merely waiting for employment or settlement. The whole District had about nine thousand. Curiously enough, Melbourne (including suburbs) has always had about one-third of the total colonial population, while Sydney and Adelaide respectively have been much the same. But this naturally comes of a vast interior behind, which has practically only the one outlet. In New Zealand, on the other hand, the long strip of land, with the sea near to every part, calls into being a number of small capitals. The latter are the immediate facilities; but, in the other case, the ultimate creation of a surpassingly great city, with all its powerful concentration of resource, seems on the whole the more promising for a country's advance in all the interests of human life. The latest returns for the end of last year (1887) give 392,000 people to Melbourne, in a total for the colony of 1,033,000.
Taking central Collins-street, which was then, and I suppose is still, the chief seat of business, and beginning with "The Shakespeare," at the market corner, where originally Fawkner opened the first public-house, and proceeding eastwards to Swanston-street, there was a good sprinkling of brick-built offices, stores, and shops, including Kerr and Holmes, in stationery; Drummond's grocery (wooden),