Our Antipodes; or, Residence and rambles in the Australasian colonies. With a glimpse of the gold fields ... Second edition, revised

Preface

TO THE THIRD EDITION. In issuing an Edition of " Our Antipodes," reduced from Three Volumes to One, the Author believes that a better Work, as well as a cheaper Book, will be offered to the Public. G. C. M. London, 1854.

PREFACE.

. " Australia is the greatest accession to substantial power ever made by England. It is the gift of a continent, unstained by war, usurpation, or the sufferings of a people." — BluclrwoorTs Magazine. " The land of The South that lies under our feet, Deficient in mouths, overburthen'd with meat ! " — Puuc/i. To publish a Book without a Preface, is like thrusting one's acquaintance, without the ceremony of introduction, upon some distinguished and formidable stranger. A few observations may be necessary, therefore, in submitting these Volumes to the Public. Their contents, then, are taken from diaries extending over a period of more than five years, — five years of " Residence " in the city of Sydney, with various " Rambles," on duty or during leisure, into the interior of New South Wales, as well as to the adjacent Colonies of New Zealand, Van Diemen's Land, and Victoria ; — the latest of these excursions having for its object the newly-discovered Gold Field of the Bathurst district.

PREFACE.

. VI The visit to New Zealand, its military posts and battle-fields, having been accomplished "on particu lar service," a slight outline of the late Anglo-Maori war has, almost insensibly, linked itself with the personal narrative. The Author would have the Public bear in mind that, during the whole of his sojourn in Australia, he was their paid and of course hard-working ser vant. They will be pleased to contemplate him as part and parcel of his office-desk, plodding through returns and reports, records and regulations, war rants and articles of war ; exchanging an occasional dry word with his clerks perched on their long legged stools, and enjoying only fugitive glimpses, over the rim of his spectacles, of more external and unprofessional affairs. But although the reduction of his notes to what he would fain believe a readable form, constituted the recreation of his leisure hours, not the business of his days, he would beg to advance that no trouble nor care was on his part spared that he had time to devote to this object.

The Work is intended to be a light work ; the Writer nevertheless would hope that the opportuni ties he enjoyed of seeing more of these remote and interesting offshoots of his native land than has fallen to the lot of many Englishmen, may have enabled him to supply some share of information likely to be useful as well as amusing, and to furnish in a familiar

PREFACE.

. Vll shape, a just conception, as far as it goes, of a portion of the world destined to become every year more important to the British Empire. Such further motives as may have actuated the Writer he would leave to be developed in the course of the Work, rather than swell a Preface by dilating upon them. If he addresses himself to his task with any ad vantages, they rest probably in the fact, that he is wholly unconnected with, and independent of the Colonies and communities he strives to delineate; and that he has neither pique, partiality, nor preju dice to indulge, in thus recording the impressions he imbibed amongst them. G. C. M. London, March Zlst, 1852. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Mounted Police and Blacks, a Rencounter . . . Frontispiece. Fording the Bell River To face page 162 Auckland, New Zealand — 242 Mountain Road, Five Islands — 445 Eagle Hawk Neck — 506 Convict Tram-way — 508 Ophir Gold Mines — 583 Rocking the Cradle, Turon River ... — OR, RESIDENCE AND RAMBLES IH THE AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES.

Chapter I. Voyage Out Botany

BAY— PORT JACKSON — SYDNEY COVE — THE CITY — GEORGE- STREET PITT-STREET — THE BARRACKS — NATIVE BLACKS — ARCHITECTURE HYDE-PARK AND HYDE-PARK BARRACKS — TEETOTAL MEETING A DINNER PARTY — MY FIRST RESIDENCE— LAWYERS — LIGHTING, PAVING, SEWERAGE- DOGS, CATS, GOATS — PRICE CURRENT — MEAT DIET — HEALTH AND BEAUTY CLIMATE— THEATRE CABBAGE-TREE MOB ORDERLY POPULATION — RIOTING AUCTIONS — ADVERTISEMENTS. A man must be leading in Europe a very sad, solitary, or unsatisfactory existence, who can, without many a pang of regret, many a sigh of painful separation, gird up his loins, shoulder his wallet, and clutch his staff, for a pilgrimage to Australia. Whether the sentence to be transported beyond the seas emanate in due course of law from a big-wig on the Bench, or in due course of service from a big-wig in the Colonial Office, the Horse Guards, or the Admiralty, he must be a hardened offender or an even-souled optimist who can hear it without emotion.

Life is but a span ; and of that brief term few are the days which by a great majority of men, especially by Englishmen, and emphatically by younger sons and brothers, are destined to be spent in the home of their infancy, or even in the land of their birth. But however engrossing may be their pursuits in foreign climes — however vivid the excitement, cruel the misfortunes, or stirring the events wherein this portion of their b life is passed — the memory of home will be intimately inter woven with all. Like a sunny streamlet flowing side by side with the traveller's path, it will cheer his eye and sing in his ear as he plods along his weary way. In health or sickness, wealth or ruin, joy or grief, victory or defeat, it is from home he looks for sympathy ; it is at home that he hopes sooner or later to display his laurels and enjoy his gains, or, should fortune have frowned upon his lot, to lay down his burthen of sorrows and reverses.

The schoolboy blubbers openly, or manfully swallows bis bitter feelings, as the chaise or train bears him off for a few weeks only, from home and holidays to Latin and Greek. The fair and happy bride, while the four greys are pawing before the home no longer hers, throws herself — all tears — into her mother's arms, though well aware that almost ere the honeymoon has waned she will embrace her once more. In such cases parting is but sweet sorrow. There is little saccharine, believe me, in the affair, when The Antipodes is the point of destination ! The immense distance and the amount of time necessary to accomplish it, the tardiness of correspondence with home, the gradual alienation too surely springing from protracted absence, and the fore knowledge that this absence can only terminate by the repetition of the same tremendous voyage, — such are some of the drawbacks confronting him who meditates expatriation.

There are indeed two cases in which the shock of expulsion may fall with mitigated rigour— the one where the individual, having both merited and expected the gallows, finds himself expelled his country for his country's good, instead of passing through the hands of the hangman ; the other, when a step of promotion and an honourable appointment accompany the fiat of expulsion. Give me credit, kind Reader, for belonging to the latter class of exiles.* * The Author Lad been appointed Deputy Aajutant-General in the Australian Colonies. The following anecdote was related at a regimental mess in Sydney by a gentleman holding a high official appointment in the Colony under the Crown. Returning home on leave of absence about the year 18.17, he got into conversation with an Irish cabman, who, recollecting his person, demanded respectfully " where his honour had been this long time."

"In New South Wales," was the reply. "Botany Bay, is it?" pursued the driver " Exactly," said the gentleman. After VOYAGE OUT. On the afternoon of the 3d March, 1846, I arrived at Gravesend with a brother who had volunteered to see me on board, and took rooms for the night at the Falcon Hotel, from the windows of which we witnessed a somewhat ill-omened incident as a precursor of the voyage. Scarcely had we got the Agincourl within the focus of the hotel telescope, as she lay at anchor in the stream, when a hulking collier, lumbering along with the ebb tide, fell right aboard of the barque, snapping off her jib-boom like a carrot, and inflicting other more trifling damage. To find, to fashion, and to rig so con siderable a spar, caused a delay of twenty-four hours, — during which nothing very worthy of note occurred, except perhaps that, having ordered a late dinner for my brother and self at the inn, and strolling into the coffee-room in quest of distraction from feelings full of gloom, I found one of the tables occupied by a solitary individual, who having already dined, and possibly discussed a pint of " Warren's Jet " in the shape of inn port, seemed absorbed in the contents of a memorandum-book.

Instinct prompting me, I addressed this gentleman with the words — " Sir, may I take the liberty of inquiring whether you are one of my fellow-passengers in the Agincourt, for Sydney ?" He slowly raised his head, and with an expression of coun tenance as disconsolate as that of Liston in the " Illustrious Stranger," when the procession, conducting him to a living tomb, crosses the stage, replied gravely — " I think, Sir, you might judge from the length of my visage that I am one of those unfortunate persons." Such was the commencement of an acquaintance — of a friendship I may say — which beguiled for me many an other wise dull and tedious hour during the passage. Mr. F will recognise and forgive this little sketch, while he accepts the acknowledgments due to him as an intelligent and intellectual companion.

In this capacity, as well as in that of the humorous editor of our newspaper, The Weekly Weed, my friend of the Falcon deserved the gratitude of " all hands " on board the good ship Agincourt. After a short pause, Paddy's curiosity overcoming his politeness, he whispered, "Might I make bould to ask, Sir, what took you there? " " Oli ! I went at the Queen's expense," answered the other, humouring his interrogator's evident suspicions. Here Paddy's politeness recovered itself, although his suspicions were confirmed. "Ah! " said he, "there's many a good man gone out that same way." b2j A splendid summer-like Sunday was the 8th of March — Agincourt trying her paces successfully with twenty other large vessels, all taking advantage of a fresh N.E. breeze, as we rushed together in a body past the magnificent cliffs of Dover.

At nine p.m. the following day we kissed hands to a light-house ;• — it was the last sight of Albion as we thought • but the wind proving unsettled, we were enabled to send letters ashore at the Start Point by a fishing-boat on the 12th, on which evening we got fairly away — a shipful of strangers bound to a strange land. If I were writing for any but English readers, I might be tempted to extract largely from my sea-log ; but the passage of the Atlantic had nothing new for me ; and almost every English family has at least one member who, while happy in an interim of home, can enlighten the fire-side circle with reminiscences rendering seafaring life a household subject in the most rurally secluded nooks of our blessed islands. Nothing, indeed, could well have been less eventful than our voyage.

We had an excellent vessel of 600 tons and upwards, — well found in every particular; an active, skilful, liberal, and attentive captain, who had one very remarkable peculiarity as a " skipper ; " he was never heard to utter an oath, nor anything approaching the nature of one, nor indeed any expression of harshness or abuse towards his people : yet the discipline on board was admirable. We had a capital cook, who, roll and plunge as the vessel might, never failed us. No difficulty existed in the creation of the repasts. It lay in getting their components along the deck to the cabin-table, keeping them there when on, and receiving them thankfully and discreetly with the proper implements and through the proper channels. We had, moreover, a miraculous cow which, in spite of dry food and a wet berth, contrived to yield her daily dole of eight or ten quarts a-day during the voyage.

March 22d. — Passing Madeira, I hailed this gem of the sea as an old acquaintance, but felt no desire for a second visit. In a long voyage going ashore unsettles the mind and the body. Once at my oar I think only of the end of my pull, and have no wish to loiter on the way. April 10th. — Crossed the equator. Neptune sent his usual message inviting himself and suite VOYAGE OUT. on board for this afternoon. Our captain, however, an enemy to any species of tom-foolery liable to end in drunkenness, riot, and ill-blood, snuffed out the affair at once; and the passengers, approving of his decision, collected a bonus of 5/. to indemnify the crew for the loss of their frolic. On the 4th May we sailed right through the group of Tristan Da Cunha — passing "Nightingale" and "Inaccessible" Islands on our right and left — the latter at the distance of half a mile ; a rock-scarped table-land covered with a stunted shrub-like gorse.

Several fine fresh-water cascades — one of them apparently as considerable as any in Switzerland — were seen leaping clown the whole depth of the cliff, probably five hundred feet. About six miles to our left appeared the chief island of Tristan Da Cunha, with its snow-capped mountain in the midst. It is probably the most utterly secluded spot inhabited by man. Here resides the so-called Governor of the Group, Corporal Glass, and twenty or thirty other Euro peans — most of them descendants from the one or two patri archal pairs who were originally wrecked there. Agincourt' s approach to this solitary cluster of islands gave occasion for a forcible editorial article in The Weed. In the doubt whether the corporal had been duly accredited from home, or had usurped the supreme authority, it was proposed to effect a landing, and to impose upon the united islands a new consti tution concocted during the editor's cigar and gin-and-water hours.

The only feature of the meditated scheme of govern ment, worthy of record perhaps for the benefit of future statesmen, was the mode of election of the governor and his principal officers. Parties ambitious of public employment were to be invited to tender their terms. The best man — that is, the lowest contractor for the work required — would be chosen, and good security would be exacted for the due performance of his contract — a business-like notion, not re pugnant to the dictum of Sir Robert Peel, "that the very best men that can be found should be placed in the adminis tration of Colonial affairs ! " One of our fellow-passengers, remarkable for rather desultory habits, was nominated to the pluralist post of collector of revenue, registrar of births, &c &c, and commissioner of woods and forests for " Inaccessible Island " — there not being a stick, a stiver, or a specimen of mankind on that utterly desert rock !

Fortunately the breezo freshened to half a gale of wind, and Corporal Glass had no opportunity of repudiating our bran-new constitution, as he would certainly have done — if for no better cause than his perfectly natural preference of despotic rule to a form of government of a more responsible cast ! Thus wiled we away, as well as we could, the tedious and monotonous hours of a voyage to the Antipodes. I say nothing of storms and calms, breezes fair or foul, light or stiff, weather bright or hazy, hot or icy, thunder, rain, or hail, tumid clouds or minacious billows. We had our share of all these. And indeed no slight variations of climate were crowded for us into a short space ; for, singular as it may appear, in nine weeks we ran fairly through the seasons. We had winter weather at Deal, overtook spring in the vicinity of Madeira, plunged into midsummer on the equator, found autumn in latitude 35° ; and, soon after passing Tristan Da Cunha, winter helped us on with our pea-jackets again.

June 20th. — Land ho ! Cape Otway twenty miles distant. At this first indication of our destined bourne, those of the passengers who had previously visited New Holland, or who had adopted it for their country, began to show strong symptoms of excitement and impatience, and indeed they had occasion to suffer the pangs of hope deferred, for the slashing breeze that had brought us as straight as a crow's flight from the Cape of Good Hope, suddenly deserted us in Bass's Straits, leaving the good ship to drift about like a log within view of the islet of Rodondo, the Devil's Tower, and Hogan's Group. After forty-eight hours, however, the wind again arose, and carried us forth from this dangerous though picturesque Archipelago. For myself, the yearning to step upon the strange land likely to be my place of sojourn for some years by no means affected me to a painful degree.

Although tired of the sea and ship life, and eager to plant my foot once more on terra firma, the " Terra Australis Incognita " of the old navigators was not precisely the choice I should have made — if I had had one ; for in all that land there was not one human face, as far as I knew, that I had ever seen before. Meanwhile the Agincourt rounded Cape Howe, the south eastern point of New Flolland, with a favouring breeze. On the 24th, I found myself in my solitude of the maiu-crosstrees, PORT JACKSON. — solitude rarely disturbed by any of my brother landsmen, — sweeping with my telescope the forest hills of Twofold Bay — beyond these the huge salient promontory of the Dromedary with the pretty Montagu Island at its foot — and the long dim line of scarped and inhospitable coast stretching away to the northward of these points.

Early on the morning of the 25th June we were gliding past the entrance to Botany Bay, and with the glass could distinguish the monument erected to the memory of poor La Perouse by his compatriots, on the northern shore of that extensive basin ; — Botany Bay ! so undeservedly yet indelibly branded as the head quarters of exiled felony — the terrestrial purgatory of Britain's evil-doers ; undeservedly, I say, because this harbour, originally chosen by Captain Phillip for the first convict settlement in New South Wales, was, on trial, found unfit for the purpose, and was accordingly in a few weeks abandoned for the neighbouring position of Port Jackson. Shortly before midday, the Agincourt passed close under the lighthouse of Port Jackson, perched upon a horizontally stratified cliff, descending plumb 300 feet into deep water ; and precisely at 12 o'clock we entered "The Heads," that grand and appropriate portal of one of the noblest harbours in the world.

Working against an adverse wind, under charge of a pilot, the good ship zigzagged her course along the seven miles of inland water connecting The Heads with Sydney Cove; and at 3 p.m. of an Australian mid-wintry but splendid day the anchor was dropped in that snug little haven, within a biscuit's cast of the spot where, in the year 1783, the first Governor of New South Wales pitched the tents of the first British plantation in New Holland. In spite of the undoubted beauties of Port Jackson, its glorious expanse of smooth water, its numerous lovely islets, its sweeping bays and swelling headlands, wooded down to the water edge and crested with handsome villas, there is to the stranger's eye something singularly repulsive in the leaden tint of the gum-tree foliage, and in the dry and sterile sandstone from which it springs.

The stiff hard leaves, which seem expressly formed to resist the chill wind and powerful sun of an Australian winter, although nominally evergreen, but little deserve the epithet. On this day there was no want of cheerful accessories in and about the harbour. Its bosom was studded with swarms of pleasure-boats; the coves were crowded with shipping. As our vessel neared the shores in the process of beating, we saw parties of horsemen and horsewomen can tering along the crescented slips of sand, carriages appearing and disappearing among the trees ; and, on a headland close to the town, were promenading groups of well-dressed people, amongst whom might be seen the uniform of officers and soldiers, making up a gay prism of colours in the bright sun light, The weather must have been by the colonists consi dered cold, although we, after the alternations of a long voyage, did not find it so.

The Health-officer and a Post-office functionary came off to us in a boat pulled by prisoners. I believe I e.xpected to see these men chained like galley-slaves to their oars ; and was a little disappointed, perhaps, when I found them differing in nowise from an ordinary boat's crew, except in their bad rowing. So, likewise, on finding myself dodged from deck to cuddy, from cabin to poop, by a keen-looking young man, who addressed me in a low earnest voice, I expected to have my pocket picked ; when, turning sternly upon him for exXplana tion, I discovered his intentions to be strictly honourable. He was a newspaper reporter, doubly anxious for news because the Agincourt, being the March mail-packet from England, had arrived before the February packet. This sharp caterer for the Sydney quidnuncs, had heard that I had brought on board at Deal the latest English journal.

I handed it to him, with the request that it might be returned when done with. He vanished over the ship's side, and I uever saw him nor my newspaper again. Like the generality of mercantile towns, viewed from the sea, Sydney, although containing nearly 50,000 inhabitants, presents from this aspect no very imposing appearance. It might be Waterford, or Wapping, with a dash of Nova Scotian Halifax. The main streets, built along the crests and flanks of two or three highish ridges trending inland, are unseen from the shipping ; but this very peculiarity of its site gives to Sydney a greater extent of deep water frontage than, per haps, any other commercial city in the universe. These spines of land, or rather rock, subdivide the south shore of Port Jackson, at the spot where Sydney has arisen like a huge mushroom, into numerous small and deep basins, among SYDNEY. which the principal are Wcoloomooloo Bay, Farm Cove, sacred to H. M.'s ships; Sydney Cove, and Darling Harbour; the whole presenting capabilities for natural wharfage, such as I have never seen equalled.

The new Government-house, a really handsome structure of stone, with its gardens and home domain, occupies the promontory between Wooloomooloo Bay and Sydney Cove ; and thus, although close to the town, its privacy is completely secured by a park paling drawn across the neck of the peninsula. Beyond this fence the outer do main, an extensive government reserve, acts as one of the lungs of Sydney. Its circuit embraces nearly four miles of carriage-road and foot-path,, cleverly and tastefully planned by Mrs. Macquarie, wife of the governor of that name, and executed under her direction by convict labour. To this lady the citizens of Sydney are indebted for a plaisance such as few of the capitals of Europe can surpass in extent and beauty. At the head of Farm Cove, encompassed by the outer domain, are the Government Botanic Gardens, comprising several acres of shrubbery and flower-garden, in which specimens of the vegetable productions of almost every part of the globe are assembled for the study of the scientific, and for the instruc tion and wonderment of the uninitiated.

But let us set foot upon the soil of Australia before we attempt to sketch its features. It will be honest, I think, to lay open to my reader first impressions as they stand noted in my diary of 1846. He will find, probably, that the more my acquaintance with the colony became matured, the more benignant became my feel ings towards it — a progressive appreciation, surely more satisfactory than an over sanguine first view, chilling by degrees down to zero. A most kind offer of bed and board from an old friend of my family met me ere I disembarked ; but preferring independence, I declined this hospitality ; and landing solus at the bottom of George-street, I strolled, stick in hand, my man following with my portmanteau in a cab, up to Petty's hotel, a respectable, quiet establishment, where I remained about a fortnight, ere my tent was permanently pitched in Sydney.

I passed my first Australian evening in rambling slowly up George-street, the main artery of the city, and down Pitt-street, the second in rank ; and should have been truly astonished at the immense extent of the former thoroughfare —the Broadway and Oxford-street of the Antipodes, 2\ miles long — and at the endless succession of well supplied and well lighted shops in both, but that certain Sydneyites, my fellow passengers, had in so loud and high a key chanted the praises of their adopted city, that, on actual inspection, I had nothing to do but to come tumbling down the gamut until I reached my own pitch note. What greater injustice to man or matter than this super-laudation ! Niagara cannot bear it — what more need be said ? Passing through the Barrack-square to mine inn, shortly before nine o'clock I found tattoo going on, the drums and fifes of the 99th regiment rattling away Mrs. Waylett's pretty old song of, " I'd be a Butterfly," in the most spirited style, just as though we were not 16,000 miles from the Horse Guards !

It was the first note of music I had heard since leaving home ; and I do not know when a more soothing and agreeable sensation pervaded my mind than at that moment, as I stood listening under the bright moonlight of this "far countrie" to a parcel of old well-remembered airs, that had been discarded by the London butcher-boys a quarter of a century ago. June 26th. — Sydney wrants the foreign and exotic interest of other of our colonial capitals. Neither the aborigines themselves, nor any object belonging to them, nor the natives of any other country, mix with the nearly exclusively British population and products of the place. Now and then, indeed, a Chinaman, with his pig's-tail and eyes, and his poking shoulders, crosses your vision as if he had dropped, not from the clouds — although the Celestials have a right to be expected thence — but from a willow pattern soup-plate.

Perhaps a specimen or two of the New Zealander, brown, broad, brawny and deeply tattooed, may occur. In the outskirts of the town, a chattering, half-besotted group of the wretched natives of New Flolland itself, tall, and thin even to emaciation, with great woolly heads and beards and flat features, may be seen, grinning and gesticulating in each other's ugly faces in loud dispute, or making low and graceful bows, worthy of the old school, whilst begging a copper, or " white money," from the passengers, as they loiter near the door of some pot-house. Sydney is, I think, more exclusively English in its population than either Liverpool or London. Were it not for an occasional orange-tree in full bloom or fruit in the back yard of ARCHITECTURE. some of the older cottages, or a flock of little green parrots whistling as they alight for a moment on a housetop, one might fancy himself at Brighton or Plymouth.

The construction of the buildings is blameably ill-suited to a semi-tropical climate,— barefaced, smug-looking tenements, without verandahs or even broad eaves, a fault extending to the Government House itself, whose great staring windows are doomed to grill unveiled, because, forsooth, any excrescence upon their stone mullions would be heterodox to the order or disorder of its architecture. Surely a little composite licence might have been allowable in such a case and climate. Many of the private residences of Sydney and its suburbs are both hand some and comfortable, — most of them crowded with expensive furniture, therein differing from the practice in most warm countries, where the receiving-rooms and bed-rooms contain little be yond the muniments necessary for sitting and lying, and those of the plainest, hardest, and most undraped description.

The majority of the public buildings evince proof of the profusion of fine sandstone on the spot, — for a house may here be almost entirely built of the material dug from its foundation, — as well as of the solid advantages arising from convict labour, especially when so powerful an agent is wielded by a governor of such strong masonic predilections as he whose name is affixed to the facades of most of the Sydney public institutions.* These edifices suit their purposes, no doubt, but have nothing, I think, to recommend them to the eye. On the subject of public places, the fact that the " Hyde Park" of Sydney is merely a fenced common, without a tree or a blade of grass, and the " Hyde Park Barracks" a convict depot, grates somewhat unpleasantly on the feelings of one lately arrived from London. dune 29th. — The well-known hospitable spirit of the Sydney society developed itself in my favour this morning, in the shape of a mound of visiting cards, interlarded with numerous invitations to dinners and evening parties.