Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria | Page 7

Sandridge, to be finally
superseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne, which, with its
mayor and corporation, can now enter the London market with its own
loan issues.
The only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless Beach
which I recollect was a little virulently salt lagoon, situated in complete
isolation near the Bay, and only some hundred yards on the right-hand
side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, but it had
extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surrounding of
bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and ferocious
mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and in its desolate
solitude, it 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