Town Life in Australia | Page 6

to have your meals in a private sitting-room. For a bachelor, who is not particular so long as his rooms are clean, and can put up with plain fare, there need, however, be no difficulty in getting accommodation; but anyone who wishes to be comfortable had better live at the clubs, which in every one of the 'capitals' are most liberal in their hospitality, and have bedrooms on their premises. Visitors to the colony are made honorary members for a month on the introduction of any two members, and the term is extended to six months on the small subscription of a guinea a month. The Melbourne Club is the best appointed in the Colonies. The rooms are comfortable, and decently though by no means luxuriously furnished, and a very fair table is kept. The servants wear full livery. There is a small library, all the usual appurtenances of a London club, and a racquet-court. The other clubs, though less pretentious, are all comfortable.
Your colonial rarely walks a step farther than he can help, and of course laziness is well provided with cabs and omnibuses. You can take your choice between one-horse waggonettes and hansoms, though a suspicion of Bohemia still lingers about the latter. Happily Mrs. Grundy has never introduced 'growlers.' The waggonettes are light boxes on wheels, covered in with oil-cloth, which can be rolled up in a few seconds if the weather is fine or warm. It is strange that victorias like those in Paris have never been tried in this warm climate. A few years ago Irish jaunting-cars and a jolting vehicle called a 'jingle' were much used, but they have slipped out of favour of late, and are now almost obsolete. The fares are usually moderate, ranging from a shilling for a quarter of an hour to the same coin for the first mile, and sixpence for every subsequent one. Cabby is fairly civil, but, as at home, always expects more than his legal fare.
Nowhere do omnibuses drive a more thriving trade than in Melbourne, and they deserve it, for they are fast, clean, roomy, and well managed. The price of labour makes conductors too expensive a luxury, and passengers have to put their fare--in most cases threepence--into a little glass box close to the driver's seat. This unfortunate man, in addition to looking after the horses, and opening and shutting the door by means of a strap tied to his foot, which you pull when you want to get out, has to give change whenever a little bell is rung, and to see that the threepences in the glass box correspond to the number of passengers. Yet not only does he drive fast and carefully along the crowded thoroughfares, but it is difficult to escape without paying. Several times when a 'bus has been crowded I have tried the effect of omitting payment. Invariably the driver has touched his bell, and if that is not attended to, he puts his face to the chink through which change is passed, and having re-counted the number of people in the 'bus, civilly intimates that 'some gentleman has forgotten to put in his fare.' Where the omnibus companies have not penetrated, waggonettes similar to those previously described pioneer the road, and on some well-frequented lines they run in competition with the omnibuses.
I don't know that it would be true to say that the number of horses and vehicles in the streets strikes the stranger's eye as a rule. A man accustomed to the traffic of London streets passes over the traffic of Melbourne, great as it is for a town of its size, without notice. But I think he cannot but notice the novel nature of the Melbourne traffic, the prevalence of that light four-wheeled vehicle called the 'buggy,' which we have imported via America, and the extraordinary number of horsemen he meets. The horses at first sight strike the eye unpleasantly. They look rough, and are rarely properly groomed. But, as experience will soon teach the stranger, they are far less delicate than English horses. They get through a considerably greater quantity of work, and are less fatigued at the end of it.
A walk down Collins Street or Flinders Lane would astonish some of the City Croesuses. But if a visitor really wishes to form an idea of the wealth concentrated in Melbourne, he cannot do better than spend a week walking round the suburbs, and noting the thousands of large roomy houses and well-kept gardens which betoken incomes of over two thousand a year, and the tens of thousands of villas whose occupants must be spending from a thousand to fifteen hundred a year. All these suburbs are connected with the town by railway. A quarter of an hour will bring you ten miles to