Town Life in Australia | Page 6

a secondary consideration. This is very
disagreeable for ladies. The best hotels, moreover, have no _table
d'hote_--only the old-fashioned coffee and commercial rooms; so that if
you are travelling en famille you have no choice but 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