Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria | Page 8

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), 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,