Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

Having read thus far, you will very likely tap the floor impatiently with your foot, and say—if you have not said it already—"Well, but what is the fellow about himself?" Patience, gentle Christopher. I will tell you now. Upon my arrival with a pocket, as you are aware, not very inconveniently laden, I kept of course "my eye ahead" for any thing suitable in the farming way; sheep-stock or cattle. But it would not do. Capital was required to get a sheep-station, and employment as an overseer, in consequence of the depression that existed in the markets for all kinds of stock, altogether hopeless. No man is idle here longer than he can help it, unless he have the wherewithal to look to; and there are fifty modes of gaining bread here, if a man will turn to them? What could a briefless barrister do better than throw himself upon the law? I smelled out the attorneys to begin with. The first with whom I came in contact was one Mr ——, from a northern county in England. He had been here only three years, and was already rattling about in his carriage. He arrived without a shoe to his foot, or a sixpence in his pocket. Another was my old and respected friend Mr ——, writer to the signet, of Edinburgh, who had been here about eighteen months, was living like a gentleman, and on the point of entering a fine new dwelling-house, which he had himself erected out of his own honourable gains. Upon him I waited, and from his kindness I obtained all the information I stood in need of; and not only this, but immediate profitable employment in his office, which, with his leave, I hold until something offers—whether I shall claim admission as attorney, solicitor, and proctor, as some have done before me, or resort to my old calling of advocate, is as yet an undecided question. I am now in the receipt of more than is necessary for subsistence, and I shall look before I leap. The rents of houses are extravagantly high. The poorest tradesmen pay fifteen shillings a-week for his small house—and he must pay it weekly; the better class of tradesmen pay twenty and twenty-five shillings, and the higher class from two to four pounds a-week; for a petty dwelling containing only three rooms and a kitchen. A small brick cottage held by a friend of mine, and consisting of sitting-room, bed-room, servant's room, and kitchen, is considered a great bargain at a hundred pounds per annum. The hours of business are limited with strictness to seven—videlicit, from nine in the morning until four P.M. You are your own master after four o'clock, and need fear no business-calls or interruptions. Whilst business, however, is going on, the excitement and bustle compel me to regard Cheapside on a Saturday afternoon, as a place of great quietness and an agreeable promenade. Fellows are riding as hard as they can tear from one end of the town to the other—cattle are driving to and fro—bullock-drays are crowding from the interior with wood—auctions are eternally at work—settlers are coming from their stations, or getting their provisions in. Tradesmen and mercantile men are hurry-skurrying with their orders. A vast amount of work is done up to four o'clock, and afterwards all is silence, and the place looks unlike nothing so much as itself; and yet, notwithstanding all this bustle, money is altogether out of the question. From what exact cause or series of causes, I cannot tell you now—but the fact is certain that the mercantile community here is nearly bankrupt. There is a glut of goods, a superabundance of every thing in the market. It has been wrongfully supposed in England that every thing would sell here, and the consequence has been that an overflow of every kind of commodity has poured in upon us. The supply has doubled and trebled the demand. Upon the first establishment of these settlements the wants of the people were of course many, and their prices for stock were so good, and their speculations in land so profitable and bright, that they could afford the indulgence of a luxury, no matter what price was asked to purchase it. It is very different now. The staple commodity of this colony is wool. Well, so long as all the stations or sheep-runs continued unoccupied, and new settlers arrived, the price of sheep kept naturally very high; but every station that can command a due supply of water, is now in occupation, and consequently the demand for stock has ceased. Sheep, which three years ago sold for twenty-five and eighteen shillings, command now, for first quality, eight shillings and sixpence only; ordinary quality, six shillings; and middling as low as five shillings. For cash sale by sheriff-warrant, I have seen beautiful ewes, free from all disease—2000 of them—sold for two and sixpence each! Cattle three years ago sold for ten, twelve, and sometimes fifteen pounds per head. At this moment they are so plentiful that I could purchase a drove of fat cattle, two to three hundred head—and some of them weighing eighty stone—for eight pounds a beast, and that on credit too by approved bill at four months' date. Such are a few of the reasons why a damper has come over the Port Philip market, reducing amongst other things the price of wages by nearly a third. Emigrants continue to pour in, and they stare and are grievously disappointed at the rate of wages, so very different to that which they expected. Twelve months since, a single labouring man got forty pounds per annum, with weekly rations of provisions; now with his rations, he receives only twenty-five, or at most thirty pounds per annum. Married men with young families will not be hired at any rate, for they are only burdens on a station. A good thorough-bred shepherd maintains his price. He is still in great demand, and may command from sixty to seventy pounds per annum, with rations, cow's milk, free hut, and a portion of produce of stock in addition to all, if he chooses to put his wages to that mode of profit. Women servants were formerly much wanted. They are now at a discount. The filthy drabs ejected from Ireland are scarcely worth their meat. I am proud to say it, and you should be proud to hear it, gentle Christopher, that a Scotch servant, male or female, is forty per cent above every other in value in this colony. Scotch servants get ahead in spite of every thing. The Scotch tradesmen have almost all of them made money; some abundantly. I have met many here from the North who brought nothing but their energy, moderation, and unconquerable perseverance with them, and they are affluent, and are becoming daily more so. Donald ——, who was a servant lad at home, and is now a respected and respectable man in Melbourne, is independent. He went first to Van Diemen's Land, and came here some three years ago. "And had you arrived," he said to me the other day, "at the same time, you might now have been moving home a prosperous gentleman." However, nil desperandum. There is still a fair opportunity for an industrious man, who above all things has resolution to be SOBER in his habits. The mischief with the labouring man has been, that having suddenly discovered his wages to be high in comparison with those he received in the mother country, he has considered himself entitled to have a proportionate extra amount of enjoyment at the public-house, where drink is very high. Good tradesmen would infallibly make money, but for this great failing. The bullock dray-drivers, certainly the best paid of all the working men, absolutely think nothing of coming from the Bush into Melbourne, with twenty or thirty pounds in their pocket, and spending every farthing of the sum—in one night—champagne to the mast-head. The innkeepers make fortunes rapidly. Shall I tell how much Boniface will draw in a week? No—for you will not believe me. Certainly as much as many an innkeeper in a country town would draw in twelve months. An innkeeper's license to Government is thirty pounds per annum. This entitles him to keep his house open from six in the morning until eleven o'clock at night; ten pounds more enables him to have open house during the night; and an additional ten pounds enables him to keep a billiard table. There are a great many houses with tables and a number of light houses; but, as I have hinted before, our police courts exhibit abominations, and a police court is a good criterion of the morals of a people. In the first formation and early beginnings of this colony, a man having sheep took up his abode in the interior, on any spot which he considered suitable and agreeable, and he was called a squatter. Now no individual may pasture sheep or cattle of any kind without receiving a license from Government, for which he pays ten pounds annually, and making a return every year of all his stock, servants, and increase—the license, by the way, not being available within three miles of Melbourne. The holder of such a license is called a settler. A settler is entitled to cut wood upon his own station or run, for firing for himself and servants; but if he cut it for sale—and we have no coal here—he pays, in addition to the ten pounds, three pounds more per annum for the permission so to do.

You shall now receive a faithful account of the settling of a settler. Suppose him to have a station in the interior, or as it is invariably styled, "in the Bush." The distance is forty, fifty, or it may be eighty, miles from Melbourne, and the stock consists of from four to five thousand sheep, and from one to two hundred head of cattle. The settler, in all probability, has been accustomed in early life to good society, has been well educated and brought up. Living at his station he sees none but his own servants, his chère amie, (always a part of a settler's stock,) and perhaps a few black natives, not unfrequently hostile visitors. Business calls the settler to Melbourne; he puts up at his inn; any thing in the shape of society rejoices his heart, and forthwith he begins "the lark;" he dines out—gets fuddled, returns to his inn, finds a city friend or two waiting for him, treats them to champagne, of which, at ten shillings per bottle, they drink no end. Very well. His horse is in the stable at seven shillings and sixpence a-night, his own bill varies from six to eight pounds per diem, and at the end of a fortnight my settler is called upon to hand over a cheque upon his banker to the tune of a hundred pounds, or, if he has no bank-account, his promissory note at a very short date. Away starts the settler back to his solitude; he has given his bill, and he thinks no more about it; but the bill finds its way quickly into the hands of an attorney, and in eight days there is an execution out for recovery, with an addition of ten pounds already incurred in legal expenses. The sheriff's bailiff rides to the station and demands payment of the whole. He gets no money, but settler and bailiff return in company to Melbourne: a friend is applied to; he discounts a bill for the sum required. The attorney is paid the amount by the hands of the sheriff. The bill once more becomes due, and is once more dishonoured; expenses run up like wildfire. This time there is no escape, and a portion of the stock must be sold to avoid ruin—and it is sold sometimes at a fearful sacrifice. This is no insulated case. It is the history of nine-tenths of the thoughtless fellows who dwell away in the Bush. Such gentlemen at the present hour, in consequence of the depressed state of the stock market, are all but ruined. Any one of them, who twelve months since purchased his flock of two thousand sheep at eighteen or five-and-twenty shillings, can only reckon upon a fourth of the amount in value now. It is increase only that enables him to pay his servants, and he has as much off the wool as affords him the means of living. The sale of his wethers would not pay for the tear and wear of bullocks and drays; and if any profit does by any chance arise, it can be only from occasionally catching a few head of cattle, which, as they run wild in the woods, the settler can keep no account of, and only with difficulty secure when they come to a lagoon for water, where they are watched, because at one time or another they are certain to appear. Horses are very dear in Melbourne: a useless brute, which in England would be dear at ten pounds, sells here quickly for thirty; a good saddle horse will fetch a hundred, and I have seen some tolerable cart horses sold for fifty and sixty pounds. In a new colony, where almost all the draught is performed by bullocks, cart horses must realize a good price. The hire of a horse and cart in Melbourne is, one pound four shillings for the day.

In addition to those above spoken of there is another class of settlers, who were the original stock-holders and land-purchasers in the district. They have large tracts of country in the Bush, and thousands of sheep and cattle on then, and all managed by servants and overseers. These proprietors live at the clubs in Melbourne and constitute what is here termed the élite of society. A short time ago these gentlemen entertained the pleasing notion, that there was to be no termination to the increase and extent of their wealth; and one very young member of the society was heard to exclaim, in apparent agony at his excessive good fortune, "upon my soul, I am become most disgustingly rich." But mark the difference The élite have been living in the most extravagant manner. They discounted bills at their own pleasure here at ten per cent; and knowing well that these bills would not be honoured at maturity, they sent them to London, and cashed them there: with the funds thus raised, they speculated in the buying of land and stock, hoping to get (as in many instances they did) at least eighty per cent profit by their transactions. But now stock has fallen to a trifle; bills are falling due, rushing back from England under protest—and the bubble bursts. The banks are drawing in their accommodation, and the élite, who were a short time back so disgustingly rich, are, whilst I write, most disgustingly poor. This is no imaginative statement; it is a sober fact. But I do not suppose that the present state of things will last long. Speculation and the rate of interest must come down. When the human body is disordered, it is a happy time for the doctor; when the body mercantile is diseased, it is the attorney's harvest time. If an attorney has any business at all, he must do well in Melbourne, for his fees are inordinately high. Protesting a bill is five-and-twenty shillings; noting, half-a-guinea; every letter demanding payment of account, if under twenty pounds, half-a-guinea; above twenty and under a hundred pounds, one guinea; above a hundred, two guineas. Every summons (a summons being a short printed form) before the supreme court, is charged six guineas; and the clients pay down at once, without any questions, too glad to do so, provided they can get rid of their temporary difficulties. Litigation is short and quick. Conveyancing is downright profit; a deed, however short, conveying a piece of land, however trifling, costs five guineas. There are no stamps, and the work is done in an hour. More valuable properties are conveyed by a deed generally charged nine guineas. My friend —— has drawn twelve such deeds in his office in the course of one day; and with these eyes I have seen him earn six guineas in as many minutes, by appearing at the police-office when a dispute has arisen between a master and his servant. All quarrels of this kind are arranged at the police-office, when the amount of wages received by the servant does not exceed thirty pounds annually. An attorney with brains cannot fail to get ahead. He has only to use dispatch, and to begin and continue in one even and undeviating course. Our barristers are few in number. There are but four of then. There is still a glorious field for a barrister of talent, and especially if he be conversant with the nicer points of conveyancing. Any clever barrister up to the business and a good speaker, might rely upon making immediately at least a thousand a-year; the community are looking and waiting for such a man. A fellow with no capital and no profession had better not show his face in Melbourne. It is a thousand to one against him. Compared to his position that of a labourer is an enviable one; yet any respectable and intelligent man tolerably well educated, coming here with four or five hundred pounds in his pocket, may certainly, in a couple of years, and in twenty different ways, treble that capital. The best and most promising is the following:—Buy in any growing part of the town of Melbourne, a small piece of town allotment. This will cost fifty pounds, upon this you may erect two small brick cottages, containing each two rooms and a kitchen, and well fitted for a respectable tradesman. Two hundred and forty pounds will build them up; thus the whole expense of cottages and ground is two hundred and ninety pounds at most. Each cottage will, for a moral certainty, let for one pound five shillings per week, and thus return you a clear rental of sixty-four pounds per annum, for the sum of one hundred and forty-four pounds laid out. Some capitalists are not long in discovering this mode of adding to their fortunes, and it is not surprising that such men, with ease, get speedily rich. Many individuals are personally known to me who arrived here with small means a few years back, and who are now receiving an income of fifteen hundred pounds a-year from houses, which they have raised upon their profits and by not slow degrees. Their returns are certain for, mark you, every tradesman pays his rent every Monday morning, there is no delay. If it be not paid the hour it is due, the landlord is empowered by law to send a bailiff to the house, to keep him there at an expense to the tenant of three shillings per day—and to request him, at the end of five days, to sell off the goods and chattels provided the demand is still unsatisfied. I know no better investment for capital, be it large or small, than that of which I speak. There are no taxes, no ground-rents, and the tenant is bound to keep his premises in repair. If a mistake has been made in the building of houses, it is because some have overshot the mark, and built dwellings that are too large for the purposes required; these large houses cost a large sum of money, and neither let readily nor nearly so high in proportion, as the smaller houses occupied by the working-classes.

I am unable to give you an accurate notion of the general appearance of the country. Speaking in broad terms it is wooded, but not so densely as on the Sydney side, Van Diemen's Land, or New Zealand. The peculiar and beautiful feature of this country is the open plain which is found at every ten or twelve miles spreading itself over a surface not less than three miles in length and half the distance in breadth. It is as smooth as a lawn. A magnificent tree rears itself to a great height here and there upon the sward, on either side of which appears a natural park, the finest that taste could fashion or art could execute. Nature has done in fact what no art could accomplish. Gaze upon these grounds, and for a moment imagine that the enormous bullocks before you, with their fearful horns, are a gigantic herd of deer, and you have a sight that England, famous for her parks, shall in vain attempt to rival. But against this royal scene—set off a melancholy drawback, one which I fear may never be made good even by the ingenuity and indomitable energy of man. The land has an awful want of spring water. There are a few small holes, called lagoons, the remains of ancient rivers, met with now and then; and strange to say, one of such holes will be found to contain salt sea-water, whilst another, within a very few yards of it, has water quite fresh, or nearly so. In the former are found large seafish, such as cod, mullet, sea-carp, and a fish similar to our perch. I an speaking of holes discovered at a distance of a hundred and twenty miles from the sea, and having no visible communication with it. In several districts there are large rivers, but their course is uncertain, and it is impossible to say that any one river empties itself into the sea. Goulburn is a fine river, and ninety miles from this on the banks of that river, are found very large lobsters, and other shell-fish. To stand on an eminence, and to cast your eye down into the valley beyond and beneath you, is to have an enjoyment which the ardent lover of nature alone can appreciate. Far as the eye can look, there is uninterrupted harmony. Splendid plains covered with the fleecy tribe, and here and there (alas! only but here and there) a speck of water, enough to vindicate nature from the charge of utter neglect—and no more. A glance thrown in another direction brings to your view an endless tract of country deprived even of these solitary specks, where the grass grows as high as your knee, and where no man dare take his flocks and herds for lack of the sweet element. If the surface of this land were blessed with spring water as England is, the wealth of this colony would surpass the calculation of any living man. As it is, who can tell the ultimate effect of this important deprivation? There are one or two stations, on which spring water has been discovered, but it is a rare discovery, and dearly prized. In Melbourne we have no water, but such as is carted by the water barrel carters from the river Yarra-Yarra. Every house has its barrel or hogshead for holding water. The Yarra-Yarra water is brackish, and causes dysentery. The complaint is now prevailing. In many parts of the interior puddle holes are made, and water is thus secured from the heavy rain that falls in the early part of summer. Water saved in this manner never becomes putrid. The leaves of the gum-tree fall into the pool abundantly, and not only give to the water a very peculiar flavour, but preserve it from all putrefaction. This gum water is safest when boiled with a little tea, and drunk cold. Every settler in the Bush drinks water in no other way, and—for want of better things—he takes tea and fresh mutton at least three times a-day. His bread is a lump of flour and water rolled into a ball, and placed in hot ashes to bake. The loaf is called "a damper." The country, as far as I have seen it, bears evident marks of great volcanic change. You meet with a stone, round like a turnip, as hard as iron, like rusty iron in appearance, and on the outside honey-combed. There are large beds of it for miles. You then come to the flat country where the soil surpasses any thing you can conceive in richness, fit for any cultivation under heaven, and upwards of fifteen feet in depth. Before I quitted London, I heard that the climate of Australia was fine and equable, seldom varying, and well suited to a delicate constitution. I am satisfied that many consumptive persons live here, who in Scotland would be carried off in a month. You seldom hear a person cough. In church I have listened in vain for a single hoste; no, not even before the commencement of a psalm do you find the haughting and clachering that are indispensable in England. All pipes are clear as bell. I noticed this as a phenomenon on my first arrival. We are now, as you would say, in the dead of winter; a strange announcement to a British ear in the month of July. The air is chill in the morning and evening, before sunrise and after sunset, but during the day the weather is as fine as on the finest September day in Scotland. Notwithstanding what I have said, I would not have you ground any theory upon my remarks as yet—or deceive Sir James Clark, and the rest of the medical gentlemen, who are looking on all sides of the world for a climate for their hopeless invalids. I have stated facts, but those which follow are no less authentic. On the 30th and 31st of December last, the thermometer at the observatory stood in the shade at 70 deg. and 72 deg. noon. On the 1st of January at noon, and up to three clock, P.M., it stood in the shade at 92 deg. and 93 deg. On the 2d it rose to 95 deg. at noon, and fell at sunset, eight P.M., to 69 deg. In the middle of the foresaid month of December the thermometer was 86 deg. at breakfast time, and before dinner down to 63 deg. These memoranda, gained from undoubted sources, would show the climate—in summer at least—to be more variable than my reference proves it; yet I am told that even in summer time you hear of little sickness amongst grown up people. New comers suffer from dysentery, and children are attacked in the same way. I have had two visitations, from which I rallied in the course of four and twenty hours, with the aid of arrow root, port wine, and laudanum. A free use of vegetables is always dangerous to strangers, and they are obtained here in perfection. The weather is too hot for apples, pears, and gooseberries in the summer. Grapes and other English hot-house fruits come to delicious maturity in the open air. The melons are inconceivably exquisite, and grow, as they were wont in Paradise before the fall, without care or trouble spent upon them. The seed is put into the earth; a little water is given to it at that time, and the thing is done—"c'est un fait accompli." Potatoes grow at any season of the year, and cauliflowers and turnips spring up almost in a night like mushrooms. There are some five farms in cultivation around Melbourne, and the crops of wheat are very fair in quality but fall off in quantity. Thirty bushels per acre is considered a good crop. Oats grow too much to straw, and are generally cut in the slot blade, winnowed, and carted to Melbourne and sold for hay. Rye-grass hay does not answer, and clover is not more successful; but vetches have just been introduced on a small scale, and nothing yet grown has succeeded so well as green food for horses and cows. Hay of fine quality is brought from Van Diemen's Land, but it is very dear. A cart load of good oaten hay sells here for about forty-five shillings. Van Diemen's Land hay is at present eleven guineas per ton.