Old Melbourne Memories Second Edition, Revised

Once upon a time, in a "kingdom by the sea," known to men as Port Fairy, "Yambuk" was a choice and precious exemplar of the old-fashioned cattle station. What a haven of peace--...

Squattlesea Mere was about ten miles from the coast, and equidistant from the towns of Port Fairy and Portland, the latter lying about thirty miles westward. My first visit to i...

On the third day after our departure Joe and his wife were in the milking-yard finishing the morning's work, when suddenly Mrs. Burge, looking towards the road, exclaimed, "Good...

It seems only the other day--but surely it must be a long time ago--that January evening of 1844, when I camped my cattle near the old burying-ground at North Melbourne. I was b...

Sang the ladye fayre. I can hear the clear rich tones even now. Ah me! what days were those! Why will they not come back? We are scarcely of such hoar antiquity that we may not...

When Mr. Lemuel Bolden and I rode to Yering from Heidelberg, about the year 1845, to pay a promised visit to Mr. William Ryrie, the Upper Yarra road and the place of our destina...

We had been informed that the Eumeralla people, when that station was first taken up by Mr. Hunter for Hughes and Hoskins, of Sydney, always took their guns into the milking-yar...

What tales came in from far and near of ruin and disaster--farms and stations, huts and houses, rich and poor!--all had equally suffered in the Great Fire, long remembered throu...

Our border ruffians being settled with for good and all, we pioneers were enabled to devote ourselves to our legitimate business--the breeding and fattening of cattle. For this...

Mr. Learmonth had taken up Ettrick and Ellangowan, a few miles higher up on the same creek, about the same time that I "sat down" on the Lower Eumeralla. This gentleman, since a...

Blackfellows' Creek, or "Harton Hills," as the proprietor caused it to be designated when it commenced to acquire fame and reputation, was a striking example of the well-known f...

Pride and successful ambition swelled my breast on that first morning as I looked round on my run. My run! my own station! How fine a sound it had, and how fine a thing it was t...

Though kangaroo were plentiful, they were not so overwhelming in number as they have since become. Joe Burge and I had many a day's good sport together on foot. Like Mr. Sawyer...

This is a "horsey" sketch, possibly therefore unacceptable to the general reader. But any chronicle of my early days, connected as they were with the birth of a great city, woul...

In a recent advertisement in the _Australasian_ I observed public notice to be given that "the rich agricultural lands of the Kangatong estate, near Port Fairy, would be subdivi...

This was the well-known name of an exceedingly choice run close to Nareeb Nareeb, on Muston's Creek, and at an early period in the occupation of the Messrs. Charles, Henry, and...

It was in a year "before the gold" that I had occasion to ride to Kalangadoo, across the Adelaide border near Mount Gambier. Kalangadoo was a cattle station, then the property o...

Standing in the gathering winterly twilight, at the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets, one instinctively remarks the long crowded suburban trains, laden with homewa...

The captain's first cattle-muster was fixed for a certain day. I had the honour of being invited specially to superintend the classing and drafting of the bullocks, retaining th...

By this time the winter rains had commenced to fall. The wild weather of the western coast, with fierce gales from the south-east, and driving storms of sleet, showed clearly th...

Mr. Burchett was rather famous for combining pleasure with business when travelling on the road with stock. At times his experiments were thought _un peu risques_. It was relate...

When we came to Melbourne in 1840 we might have bought all the land between Prince's Bridge and Upper Toorak for the merest trifle above "upset price." As to Sandridge, St. Kild...