Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria | Page 8

Turnbull, Orr and Co., Forsyth's druggery, the Imperial Inn, Pittman, Dinwoodie's saddlery, Townend's corner (wooden), George James's wine office and house, and the ill-fortuned Port Phillip Bank. Returning by the other side were Hood, chemist; Cashmore, draper; Carson, shoemaker; J.M. Chisholm and the Benjamins, soft goods; the hardware shop of William Witton, a leading Wesleyan, his Wesleyan Church, and the Bank of Australasia, which towered up, prince of the small squad. To the far east, on the south side, was our worthy Dr. Howitt's good house and garden. On the other side were some few small brick dwellings. One was occupied by Deputy-Assistant Commissary General Erskine. In another was Dr. Hobson, whose untimely death was an early grief to our small society, unable to spare such lives. He was the friend and correspondent of Professor Owen, and supplied the Prince of Science with curious data of the strange, and then but scantily known, Australian fauna, from the platypus, at the head of modern wonders, back to the earliest marsupialdom of the fossil world.
The Reverend Alexander Morison's Independent Church and adjacent manse came next. The Scots Church, lower down, of which the Reverend James Forbes was minister, was then being built. Not till the next year was the creditably large Mechanics' Institute begun. A good story is told of it, characteristic of the earlier flourish of the times. Mr. P.W. Welsh, then the leading merchant, had offered to subscribe so largely that the committee took offence at such vain presumption, and limited subscriptions to more modest sums.
Returning to the market place, and taking its eastern side, was a small nest of early merchants--E.M. Sayers, whose stores my firm bought eight years later; Watson and Wight; Were Brothers, whose senior, the well-known Mr. Jonathan Binns Were, was always, under all fortunes, a prominent and influential merchant and citizen; W. and H. Barnes and Co., and perhaps one or two more. But as the buildings are not given in Mossman's sketch, they probably belong to the end of the year, or possibly tide over into 1841. Towards the foot of the market slope the first Custom House was being built, and of that dismal, dark-brown indurated sandstone, of which other places--St. James's Church, the old gaol, etc.--were also built, because it was so near at hand.
Sweeping now round to the west side we come to the good store and residence belonging to J.F. Strachan, of Geelong, and managed by F. Nodin, who was quite a character of the time, with his bustling form, and face ever full of business, whether business were full or not. He would always accept his bills in red ink, and, as the joke goes, the bills being good, the Nodin manner was supposed to help even the non-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia." At the corner opposite the Shakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my most worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that is nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial and amusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company had just paid 20 per cent dividend--the first as well as the last in that way. In the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit, and there was plenty of business; but when the times changed the credit bills were not met, and so the poor M.A.C., which had as usual guaranteed them, got cleaned out.
Down Collins-street once more, we pass the primitive wooden cottage residence of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, whose family of fine daughters were already all married--Mrs. D.S. Campbell, Mrs. R. Russell, Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Hutton--excepting the youngest, then a school-girl, afterwards married to Nantes, of Geelong, D.S. Campbell's partner. Then came Craig and Broadfoot's stores, and Alison and Knight's flour mills. At the end was pretty green Batman's Hill, which has since been remorselessly sacrificed for the great railway terminus. Batman's original wooden house on the southern slope was, after his early death, occupied as the Government offices by Mr. La Trobe, and this homely tenement did such high duties for no small subsequent term. Down hereabout was also a conspicuous line of five little wooden cottages, called Roach-terrace, after Captain Roach, another very early colonist, which were each let at 5 pounds a week, although they would not have brought half that money by the year at home. Returning on the other side was St. James's Church, in charge of the Reverend Mr. Thomson, of most sociable memory, within its ample open area, and, further on, the notorious Lamb Inn.
For the rest of Melbourne of 1840 I must be content with one general sketch. Manton's Mills had arisen at the lower end of