In Bad Company, and other Stories/Mount Macedon
MOUNT MACEDON
In the later days of 1842 I paid my first visit to Macedon, beyond which mountain our sheep-station, Darlington, had been formed in 1838. The overseer, on a business visit to Melbourne, whether in recognition of personal merit, or as desiring to do the polite thing to his employer's son, invited me to return with him. I jumped at the proposal. The paternal permission being granted, the following day saw me mounted upon a clever cob named Budgeree, a survivor of the overland party from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1838, fully accoutred for my first journey into Bushland—the land of mystery, romance, and adventure, which I have well explored since that day—that Eldorado whence the once-eager traveller has returned war-worn and pecuniarily on a level with the majority of pilgrims and knights-errant.
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot on ground
That looked like Eldorado.
We reached Howie's Flat, spending the night at the solitary stock-rider's hut near Woodend. I still recall the keenness of the frost, which came through the open slabs and interrupted my repose. Macedon was the first mountain I had encountered in real life, familiar as I was with his compeers in books. I regarded his shaggy sides, his towering summit, with wonder and admiration, as we rode along the straggling dray-track of the period.
Walls of dark-stemmed eucalypti bounded the narrow road; shallow runlets trickled across the rock ledges; while the breeze, strangely chill even at mid-day, but rippled the ocean of leafage. Gloomy alike seemed the endless forest ways, the twilight defiles, the rough declivities. At one such place my companion remarked, 'This blinded gully is where Joe Burge capsized the wool dray last shearing.' I thought it would be a nice place for robbers. German stories of the Bandit of the Black Forest and suchlike thrilling romances, which ended in the travellers being carried off into caverns or tied up to trees, began to come into my head. I was glad when we sighted the open country again.
We arrived at Darlington next day, not without adventures, in that we lost one horse. He slipped his head out of the tether rope, so we had to double-bank old Budgeree, who proved himself a weight-carrier, equal to the emergency.
What a change has passed over the land since then! Mr. Ebden was at Carlsruhe; Mr. Jeffreys close by; the Messrs. Mollison at Pyalong; and Coliban, Riddell, and Hamilton at Gisborne. Hardly any one else in the direct line of road. What waving prairies of grass ! what a land of promise! what a veritable Australia Felix, was the greater portion of the country we rode over !
•••••••
A decade has almost rolled by. What motley band is this which faces outward, from Melbourne, along the selfsame road on which old Macedon looks grimly down, as they ramble, straggling past under his very throne? They are gold miners, actual or presumptive.
Both worlds, all nations, every land
Had sent their conscripts forth to stand
In the goldseeker's ranks.
Mother Hertha has for once hidden her treasures so carelessly that the most unscientific scratching shall suffice to win them. A hundred deeply-rutted tracks now cross or run parallel with the once sole roadway. Wild oaths in strange tongues awaken the long-silent echoes. All ranks and orders of men are mingled as in the old crusades. Different they, alas, in purpose as in symbol! Watch-fires gleam on all sides. Night and day seem alike toilsome, troubled, vulgarised by noise and disorder, strangely incongruous with the solemn mountain shadows and the old stern solitude.
•••••••
Again the years have passed. The lurid, early goldfields are no more. Order reigns where crime and lawless violence once were rife. Handsome towns have succeeded to the crowded, squalid encampments where dwelt the fierce toilers for gold, the harpies, the camp-followers, the victims. I am seated in a commodious stage coach, which behind a well-bred team bowls along at a creditable pace over a well-kept, macadamised road. We are en route to Sandhurst, now a model town, with trees overshadowing the streets, a mayor and a corporation, gaols and hospitals, libraries and churches. Yet, as we pass Macedon, tales are told of mysterious disappearances of home-returning diggers, which recall my early association of brigands with the dark woods and lonely ravines.
•••••••
'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.' Shade of Mr. Cape, is the quotation correct, or are we doing dishonour to that great man's memory,—'building better than he knew,'—and the careful heed of quantities, inculcated by personal application to our feelings, in the days of heedless boyhood? Times have changed with a vengeance. Again in Melbourne! It is changed, I trow. Great, famous, rich, one of the known and quoted cities of the earth. We have helped to produce this triumph. But at what a price? Our youth has gone in the process. When we look at all the fine things that fill one's vision by day, by night, within its lofty halls, amid its crowded streets, we feel like the man in the old story, who for power and wealth sold himself to the Fiend. 'All that's very fine, my friend,' an unkind sprite whispers to us. 'You may or may not enjoy a part of this splendour, but you are not so young as you were. I won't mention the D in polite society, but the demon of Old Age will leave his card on you before long.'
Yes, we are still extant, not wholly invalided, in this year of grace 1884. Instead of sitting on the box of Cobb's coach in Bourke Street at 6 a.m., while the punctual Yankee driver is waiting for the Post-office clock to strike, my old friend and I, en route for his well-known hospitable home on the spurs of Macedon, enter a comfortable railway carriage at mid-day. As we are whirled luxuriously through the grassy, undulating downs and wide-stretching plains which surround Melbourne on the north-east, we have ample leisure to enjoy the view. Macedon is visible from the outset, dimly shadowed, kingly as of old, raising his empurpled bulk athwart the summer sky. Passing the towers of Rupertswood, the thriving towns of Gisborne and Riddell's Creek—did I not know them in their earliest 'slab' or ' wattle-and-daub' infancy?—in two hours of extremely easy travelling, relieved by conversation and light literature, we see 'Macedon' on the board of the railway station, and find ourselves at the village so named, built on the actual mountain slope. Piles of timber of every variety, size, and shape, which can be reft from the Eucalyptus obliqua or amygdalina, show that the ancient trade of the mountain foresters has not diminished. The chief difference I suppose to be that the splitters and sawyers are no longer compelled to lead a lonely, half-savage life, bringing the timber laboriously to Melbourne by bullock dray, and, one may well believe, indulging in a 'sdupendous and derrible shpree' after so rare a feat. They now forward their lumber by rail, live like Christians, go to church on Sundays, and read The Argus daily for literary solace.
We relinquish here the aid of steam, and trust to less scientific means of locomotion. We are in the country in the sweet, true sense of the word—component portions of a company of wisely-judging town-dwellers, who by their choice of this elevated habitat have secured a weekly supply of purest mountain air, unfettered rural life, and transcendent scenery. Various vehicles are awaiting the home-returning contingent. Buggies and sociables, dog-carts, pony-carriages, and phaetons with handsome, well-matched pairs—the reins of the prize equipage in the latter division being artistically handled by a lady. Our party and luggage are swiftly deposited, a start is made along the rather steep incline—the lady with the brown horses giving us all the go-by after a while. Half an hour brings us to our destination. We leave the winding, gravelly road; turning westwards, a lodge gate admits us through the thick-ranked screen of forest trees. Conversation has somehow flagged. What is this? We have all in a moment quitted the outer world, with its still, rude furnishing—tree stumps, road metal, wood piles, and bullock teams—and entered into—shall I say it straight out?—an earthly paradise!
Prudence here nudges me. 'Come now, don't overdo it; you're really too imaginative.' Well, there may be just the least soupçon of idealism, Prudence dear. I never was there, or if in a former state of existence, have forgotten details; but if aught mundane can furnish a partial presentment of Eve's favourite nook in that lost glory of our race, surely it is the dream-garden which now opens before our wondering vision.
On the lip of the forest hollow, taking studied advantage of every point of natural conformation, has been created a many-acred, garden landscape, absolutely perfect in growth, harmony, and sustained beauty of composition. The natural advantages, it must be admitted, are great, perhaps unequalled. 'The dark wall of the forest,' but partially invaded, forms a highly effective background to the cultured loveliness and delicate floral brilliancy which it overshadows. On either side, the sheltering primeval groves make effectual barrier against the withering north wind of summer, the winter's southern sea-blasts.
Cooler air and a lowered heat-register are consequent upon the altitude, when on the plain below, plant and animal nature alike suffer from the unpitying sun. Here rarely frost is seen or rude gales blow. Proudly and secure may the dwellers on Darraweit Heights look from their mountain home, across the unbroken stretch of plain and grassy down, relieved but by copses, around farm-steadings and cornfields, where the harvest sheaves are now standing in thick rows. In the dim distance are the gleaming waters of the Bay. That cluster of far-seen lights, when the shades of night have fallen, denotes the position of the metropolis. Can that misty, pale-blue apparition be a mountain-range—the austere outline of the Australian Alps? Westward lie the broad plains which stretch in unbroken level, well-nigh to the coast, two hundred miles from Melbourne. Around are companion heights and forest peaks. Still regal as of yore, though his woods have been rifled and his solitudes invaded, Macedon rears his majestic summit. The house—roomy, broad verandahed, luxuriously comfortable, more commodious than many a pretentious mansion—overlooks the 'pleasaunce,' to use the old Norman-French nomenclature, here so curiously appropriate. Grounds of pleasure they, in every sense of the word. More spacious than a garden, less extensive than a chase, the reclaimed wild is unique in form and design as in floral loveliness. It combines the colour-glories of the garden proper with the freedom, the 'fine, fresh, careless rapture,' of a mountain park.
Now for a closer description. We confess to have hung off, involuntarily, in despair of giving even a fairly accurate sketch of this adorable creation. What then does it comprise? Nearly all things that man has lacked since the primal fall. A collection of longed-for luxuries, for which the o'ertaxed heart of world-wise, world-wearied man so often sighs in vain. An abode of rest where, from morn till dewy eve, the eye lights on nought but 'things of beauty,' which are 'a joy for ever'; the ear is invaded by no sound but those of Nature's harmonies. Here, if anywhere on earth, may the soul be attuned to heavenly thoughts; here may this fallen nature of ours be purged from all save ennobling ideas, so truly Eden-like are the surroundings. Rare flowering shrubs developed by soil and irrigation into forest trees; masses of choice flowers, exhibiting in this our fiercest summer month a freshness and purity of bloom as astonishing as exquisitely beautiful.
The natural features of the locale have doubtless been exhaustively considered. Yet few horticultural artists would have seized so unerringly upon the difficult compromise between Art and Nature which has here been achieved. The winding walks through the mimic forests are lonely and sequestered as those of an enchanted wood. The sultry heat of the day's last lingering hour is effectually banished. The musical trickle and splash of the tiny waterfalls is in your ear as, book in hand, or lost in the rare luxury of an undisturbed day-dream, you saunter on. Half-hidden recesses appear, where great fronds of foreign ferns show strangely in the 'dim religious light'—'beautiful silence all around, save wood bird to wood bird calling.' Out of the sad, sordid, struggling world, far from its maddening discords and despair-tragedies, your soul seems to recognise a purer, more sublimated mental atmosphere, nearer in every sense to the empyrean, and freed from the lower needs of this house of clay. A half-sigh of regret tells of fair visions fled, even though you emerge on the lower, wider lawns gay with ribbonborders and yet brighter flower-fantasies in newer unfolding beauty.
For lo! in this region of glamour and the long-lost kingdom of the sorcerer, the wandering knight has fallen upon a fresh enchantment. Proudest of all the engineering triumphs, the prize must be accorded to the lakelet which glitters in the lower grounds. How the calm water sleeps beneath the heavy foliage of the farther shore! How the shadows reflect the tracery of the willow tresses, the feathery shafts of the bamboo clump! How freshly green the bordering turf! There is even an island and a wooded promontory. More than all or do my eyes deceive me? a shallop, light as that in which
The maiden paused as if again
She thought to catch the distant strain;
With head upraised and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent.
By my halidome! stands she not therein the—'Ladye of the Lake' herself,—fair as her prototype, though modernly arrayed, gracefully poising her light oar. With a smile that might lure an archangel she beckons us to embark with her on this magical mirrored water, under the charmed shadows of the golden summer eve.
Surely all this is a dream. It cannot be but illusion. We shall wake on the morrow, or next week at the farthest, to feel again the hot dust-blast as we ride across the desert plain at midnight, to mark the red moon glaring wrathfully upon the pale-hued, ghostly myall tree, that sighs despair amid the death-stricken waste.
Even so. Yet let us dream on and be happy, if but for a little space. Glide smoothly, O bark; shine tenderly, O stars, soft glimmering through the o'erhanging, rustling leafage; fan this sun-bronzed cheek, O whispering breeze, this careworn brow, till each fevered pulse be cooled. Short is our mortal span at most. How weary distant the ever-lengthening goal! But wherever Fate may guide, however stern the fray, how faint soe'er our footsteps in the onward march, this fair remembrance shall have power to refresh and reanimate our soul.
Yet another joy ere the evening, bright with songs and music, with cheerful converse and pleasant reminiscence, comes to an end. We sit amid the happy household group on the broad verandah-balcony, inhaling the cool night air, and watching the wondrous effects of light and shade produced by the late arisen moon. Masses of shrubbery stand picturesquely gloomed against the moonlit lawns; odours of invisible flowers pervade the still, pure atmosphere. Opaque as to their lower bulk, the turreted tree-tops stand in clearest illumination to their most delicate leafage against the cloudless firmament. There is no wind or any faintest breeze to stir the tenderest leaflet. All nature is so still that the tinkling murmur of the tiny rivulets, which thread the lawns and flower-beds, falls distinctly on the ear. In faint but rhythmic cadence they drip and ripple, gurgle and splash, the summer night through. The flowers in the near foreground alone border on individuality. Rose clusters and a few lily spikes are recognisable. Unlike their human kalotypes, they await the dawn to recommence their fascination. And then, in calmest contemplation, or enjoyment of low-toned interchange of thought, ends the restful, happy day. On the lower levels, in the country towns and around the metropolis, as we were subsequently assured, it was felt to be sultry and oppressively heated, while on these happy heights of Darraweit—the Simla of Victoria—the air was at once cool and fragrant, subtly exhilarating as the magic draught which renews the joys of youth.