CHAPTER VIII. South Australia....
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CHAPTER VIII
South Australia--Victoria--Tasmania--1847.
HURRYING back to London, I at once made preparations for my immediate return to Australia. Considering it a good opportunity of visiting the other Australian colonies, or some of them, I took passage in a vessel bound for Adelaide. South Australia, at this period of its early history, was in a state of considerable excitement over the somewhat recent discovery of an extraordinarily rich copper mine--the great Burra-Burra. When we arrived in the Colony a good story was being told of what had happened when the mine was being first worked.
The population of South Australia at that time consisted of men who were dubbed "gentlemen," and of men who were too proud to care to be called such. The proprietary of the mine was of course made up of these two sets of men, and it was soon discovered that they could not pull together, and neither would submit to have the mine managed exclusively by the other. It was feared that in the meantime the interests of proprietors might suffer. Rather than this, it was agreed that the mine should be divided into two lots--a half to be handed over to the "Nobs," as they were playfully labelled, and a half to the "Snobs," as they got to be called; first choice of divided property to be determined by a toss of a half-penny. All this was agreed to; the property was divided into two equal parts, the half-penny was pitched into the air, and the "Snobs," winning the toss, had the good luck to select that portion yielding fortunes to the proprietors, while the poor "Nobs " got nothing worth having.
I paid a visit to this really wonderful mine, and was very pleased at having had an opportunity of judging of its extent and richness. Other mines of copper ore and lead were subsequently discovered and worked within a short distance of this locality, but none that I ever heard of turned out as rich or lasting as this far-famed Burra-Burra mine.
On our way back to Adelaide we pulled up at a road side inn for a drink. My companions called for bottled beer and brandy, and were quickly served. I then asked for a glass of water, and was not
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so quickly served. Repeating my request, the barman grinned all over his face, and still seemed in no hurry to serve me. I then said, "Are there no wells of water in the land?" He replied, "O yes, master, for the matter of that, lots of 'em--more than enough; but I was just struck all of a heap, as the saying is, when you 'ordered' a glass of water, and looked as if you meant it. I have been in the colony since its first settlement, served behind a bar many a long day; but I never before heard a man in his senses call for a glass of water. I do wonder what the sensation is,--if I ever knew, I have long ago forgotten." There is water good enough for drinking in Australia, and in sufficient quantity to satisfy the thirst of an army of water-drinkers; but believe me when I say that for the real thing you must come back to New Zealand, where the supply is abundant and pure, and where water never needs iceing. I was, the other day, told of a man who, returning to New Zealand after having run through Australia, on landing at the Bluff, rushed up to the first pump that came into view, and drank again and again, admitting that he was experiencing a sensation that for many a day he had been a stranger to. I have a friend who brews good beer, who never tires of maintaining that the water in Canterbury being so pure and good, it must have been intended by nature to be brewed into beer.
South Australia, even in these early days of its settlement, was something more than a mining district. It had already attracted attention as a wheat-growing land, and a squatting country of some importance. It is well known to all residents in the Southern Hemisphere, that a few years after the time of which I am writing, South Australia became a very important grain-growing colony, and that the quality of the grain grown in it has never been surpassed.
I next visited Melbourne and Geelong, and the country extending some thirty miles or so to the westward, riding through fields of native grass that were quite equal, if not superior, to any that I had ever seen in the colony of New South Wales. At that time the country was wholly held and occupied by squatters, and for many years afterwards was rightly regarded as the choicest field for investment open to men of enterprise and capital.
I have been lately reading, in a work intituled "A History of the Discovery and Exploratation of Australia," by the Rev. Julian E. Tenison Woods, some account of the first discovery of the open country about Melbourne and Geelong. He writes:--
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"From a hill in the neighbourhood alternate plains and forest were seen extending as far as the eye could reach, forming a most beautiful view of swelling downs and gentle hills, looking, amid the gorgeous lines of sunset, like a lovely and deserted paradise.
"The first explorers of this fertile land, Messrs. Hume and Hovell, travelled over extensive plains. At twenty miles they came upon a river with splendid country up and down its banks. Leaving it the next day, they saw before them a strange appearance on the level horizon, which at first they took to be burning grass. It was the sea. The country near the beach was a splendid plain, between what is known as the harbours of Geelong and the Werribee, a river which Mr. Hume had named the Arndell.
"A great change has come over the place since then, though only forty years ago. The plains are still there, and the river, and the sea, but across the track of the explorers, amid that solitary plain, a railway now runs, and the lonely hills often re-echo with the shrill steam-whistle. From the top of Youyang Hume gazed upon as fair a scene as ever met the sight of an explorer, but lonely as the grave. Barely forty years after, I have enjoyed the same view; but it was a thing of life. At the opposite extremities of the plain were two large and populous cities, looking in the clear atmosphere of Australia, by far too important and extensive to be the work of two hundred years. Could anyone have told Hume what a future he was then preparing for the place, he would indeed have been proud of the position in which his discoveries that day had placed him."
This expedition and exploration by Messrs. Hume and Hovell is rightly spoken of by the historian referred to as one of the most important made in Australia, as far as the value of the country discovered is concerned. The New South Wales Government fully appreciated this, and rewarded the explorers by giving them grants of land.
When I first visited Melbourne in 1847, there was going on a general flitting of Tasmanian settlers across the straits, to take up runs lying invitingly open in the colony of Port Phillip, as Victoria was then called, and these early squatters and settlers soon reaped a harvest that a long life spent in sowing in the old colony of Van Diemen's Land would not have yielded. It may be truly said of Victoria, that for its extent there is no Australian colony in which so little of its area can be classed as worthless or inferior land.
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A great change came over the face of the country when it became a gold-producing district. The first discovery of gold in payable quantity was made in New South Wales in the Bathurst country--I think first at Ophir, on the Macquarrie river, and subsequently at the Turon river, within easy distance of the town of Bathurst.
The announcement of the actual discovery of gold by a practical and experienced miner was regarded as a great fact, and spoken of by men in business as the turning point in the history of the colony. Statesmen and politicians saw in it the beginning of a new order of things. William Charles Wentworth, in his place in Parliament, spoke of it as having precipitated the colony into a nation.
No one was wholly proof against the excitement that set in, and few able to resist the temptation of trying their luck at the diggings. Of the multitude who flocked there, provided with pick and shovel, some made fortunes, some only earned wages, and some spent all their ready money in pursuit of wealth for the search of which by hard work their previous life and training had ill-fitted them.
Leaving Melbourne, I took steamer for Sydney, arriving in good health, and well content to be again amongst my many relations and friends, from whom I had been separated for nearly three years. Three years are but a short time in a man's life, and as life goes on such a period seems shorter and shorter. But short as those three years seemed when passed, there appeared to me great changes both in the place and in the people since I had last looked upon them. The harbour of Sydney, even capacious as it is, seemed to me not quite so grand a thing as I had thought it to be. But that impression soon wore off, and I again got to think of it as second to none in the world.
