CHAPTER IX.
OLD MELBOURNE DESCRIBED.
1840—1843.
SYNOPSIS: —Difficulties of Pedestrianism. —Early Legal Difficulties. —The Queen's Wharf. —Solar Perplexities. —First Public Clock. —Early Letter-carriers. —Tardy Mail-deliveries. —First Burial Ground. —A Threatened Famine. —Early Mercantile Firms. —Jewish Residents. —Population of Colony in 1840-1. —Nocturnal Outrages. —Bill of Wants. —Sir George Gipps' Visit. —"Kite-flying." —The Unemployed. —Street Procession. —Open-air Demonstration. —Population of the Town. —First Executions of Criminals. —Commercial Depression. —Mr. Wentworth. —First Boiling-down Establishments. —Revival of Trade.
A PERSON now standing on the summit of Parliament House, and looking at the city spreading its wings, fan-like in every direction—its steeples, domes, and edifices glinting in the sunlight—the people, like bees, buzzing and busying about—the vehicles of every description, tram cars, and other evidences of active life thronging the streets—the whinnying and whistling of the "iron horse" as he rushes through the suburbs, and the fleet of shipping in Hobson's Bay—will smile with incredulity at m y portraiture of the Melbourne of nearly half a century ago, yet it will be limned to the life without a single shade or tint of exaggeration thrown in to set off the effect. Forty odd years is such a brief period in the life of a great city, that unless the Melbourne of 1840 could be attested by an eye witness, it is difficult even to imagine the state of things then existent as compared with the present, and there never has been a stronger verification than the comparison supplies, of Burke's famous adage, that "fiction lags after fact, invention is unfruitful, and imagination is cold and barren."
Melbourne in 1840 was certainly not a city, and could hardly be called a town; nor did it even partake of the characteristics of a village or a hamlet. It was a kind of big "settlement," in groups pitched here and there, with houses, sheds, and tents in clusters, or scattered in ones and twos. There were streets marked out, and stores, shops, and counting-bouses; but with the exception of those in the old Market Square and portions of Flinders, Little Flinders, Collins, and Elizabeth Streets, so dispersed that, after dark, residents incurred not only trouble but danger in moving about. The taverns, or houses of entertainment, were few in number, and, with a couple of exceptions, the accommodation for the public was of the most limited and comfortless description. There were several brick-built houses and a few weather-board cottages, with some, though not much, pretension to comfort; but the majority of the business or residential tenements were made up of colonial "wattle-and-daub," roofed with sheets of bark or coarse shingle, for slates or tiles were not to be thought of, and the corrugated iron age had not arrived. As for the thoroughfares (misnamed streets), they were almost indescribable. In the dry season some of them were in places barely passable, but in wet weather it needed no sign-board with "No Thoroughfare," or "This street is closed" inscribed thereon, for then a "close season" veritably set in, and all out-door operations, if not stopped, were materially impeded by flood-waters. In fact, during winter, the streets were chains of water-holes, and the traffic had to be suspended in places. Along the street line there was the greatest irregularity in the manner in which the tenements were placed, some being in accordance with the surveyed alignment, others several feet back; and not a few built out on what could be only in courtesy, styled the footpath. A considerable number of the allotments abutting on the streets were either unenclosed commonage, or, in some places fenced in, and a miserable abortion of a potato or cabbage garden attempted. Trees, tree-trunks and stumps were to be found everywhere; and laundresses used to suspend their wash-tub lines from tree to tree across the streets. Frequent accidents occurred through the fluttering and flapping of the white drapery so elevated, frightening horses and causing "bolts." In one instance a
