CHAPTER LXIII.
SOME RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS.
SYNOPSIS:— Batman's Hill. —Melbourne a Seven-hilled City. —The Superintendent's Official Locus. —Batman's Residence. —The Wesleyan Church Land Speculation. —Dr. Barry Colter, First Druggist. —First Billiard Room. —The "Nelson" Gold Robbery. —The Post Office Corner. —The Theatre Royal Section. —Gorges and Stone Quarries in Swanston Street. —The Town Hall Tree Stump. —Germain Nicholson's Corner. —"The Punch Bowl" and "Como." —Bisections of Society. —"New Chums" versus "Old Lags."
NOTWITHSTANDING the assiduity with which I have raked up olden reminiscences, several waifs have escaped my observation until too late to include them in any classified form, so they must have a separate chapter. In this final shaking of the kaleidoscope, some variegated particles appear which remained concealed, and have only been dislodged by repeated motion. The odds and ends here enumerated will, it is hoped, render my panorama of Old Melbourne as complete as it is possible for human brain and pen to make it.
Historic Places.
After the township was proclaimed in 1837, the portion of Little Flinders Street between Market and Queen Streets was considered to be the best locality for business, and preferred to any portion of Collins Street. What was known as the WTestern Hill was soon of most account, and the extension of Melbourne even to Elizabeth Street, was a process of some years. The original plan of the town embraced the Western and Eastern Hills. Batman's Hill was one of the earliest landmarks, and another first called Burial Hill from the formation of a small cemetery there, but subsequently known as "The Flagstaff," in consequence of its being appointed the signal station.
A super-sanguine scribe wrote of the Melbourne of the future as the City of the Seven Hills (semblant of Imperial Rome), the Eastern, Western, Batman's, The Flagstaff, Emerald, Richmond and North Melbourne (Hotham) Hills being the contnbutaries to the Urbs Septicollis. In 1870 Batman's, from which the primitive geographers determined Melbourne's latitude and longitude, was swept away for the Central Railway Terminus in Spencer Street.
We now stand on the intersection of Collins and William Streets and looking to the southwestern corner behold perhaps one of the most historic spots in Old Melbourne. The half-acre allotment was purchased by John Batman for £60, and on the corner portion he had erected the first two-storey brick building putting forth any claims to capaciousness. This tenement is easily recognized in the sketch of Melbourne (anno 1839). There was a large ground-floor room here used as an auction mart by Charles Williams. Here it was where Mr. C. J. Latrobe, the first Superintendent of Port Phillip, made his official début in September 1839.
Batman's residence was on the hill named from him, and in the course of a few years the family removed to the Collins Street tenement. They lived there in 1485. The adjoining half-acre, running from Collins to Little Flinders Streets, was bought for £33 by Mr. James Smith, the founder of our now extensive Savings' Bank system.
The half-acre section corner of Queen and Collins Streets, the present site of the Bank of Australasia, was knocked down at auction for £40, in 1837, but the purchaser, sooner than take it up, forfeited the ten per cent, deposit. There was some notion of reserving it as a site for a
