Greater Britain / A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7 by Charles Wentworth Dilke

Author:Charles Wentworth Dilke [Dilke, Charles Wentworth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER III.

VICTORIA.

THE smallest of our southern colonies except Tasmania,—one-fourth the size of New South Wales, one-eighth of Queensland, one-twelfth of West Australia, one-fifteenth of South Australia,—Victoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the dependencies of Great Britain.

When Mr. Fawkner‘s party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra banks, mooring their boat to the forest trees, they formed a settlement upon a grassy hill behind a marsh, and began to pasture sheep where Melbourne, the capital, now stands. In twenty years, Melbourne became the largest city but one in the southern hemisphere, having 150,000 people within her limits or those of the suburban towns. Victoria has grander public buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a greater income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and she pays to her governor £10,000 a year, or one-fourth more than even New South Wales.

When looked into, all this success means gold. There is industry, there is energy, there is talent, there is generosity and public spirit, but they are the abilities and virtues that gold will bring, in bringing a rush from all the world of dashing fellows in the prime of life. The progress of Melbourne is that of San Francisco; it is the success of Kokitika on a larger scale, and refined and steadied by having lasted through some years—the triumph of a population which has hitherto consisted chiefly of adult males.

Sydney people, in their jealousy of the Victorians, refuse to admit even that the superior energy of the Melbourne men is a necessary consequence of their having been the pride of the spirited youths of all the world, brought together by the rush for gold. At the time of the first “find” in 1851, all the resolute, able, physically strong do-noughts of Europe and America flocked into Port Phillip, as Victoria was then called, and such timid and weak men as came along with them being soon crowded out, the men of energy and tough vital force alone remained.

Some of the New South Welsh, shutting their eyes to the facts connected with the gold-rush, assert so loudly that the Victorians are the refuse of California, or “Yankee scum,” that when I first landed in Melbourne I expected to find street-cars, revolvers, big hotels, and fire-clubs, euchre, caucusses, and mixed drinks. I could discover nothing American about Melbourne except the grandeur of the public buildings and the width of the streets, and its people are far more thoroughly British than are the citizens of the rival capital. In many senses Melbourne is the London, Sydney the Paris, of Australia.

About the surpassing vigor of the Victorians there can be no doubt; a glance at the map shows the Victorian railways stretching to the Murray, while those of New South Wales are still boggling at the Green Hills, fifty miles from Sydney. Melbourne, the more distant port, has carried off the Australian trade with the New Zealand gold fields from Sydney, the nearer port.

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