CHAPTER X

OF THE COUNTRY AND CLIMATE, AND OF MELBOURNE GARDENS

VICTORIA, and, indeed, Australia as a whole, has been spoken of as the “Paradise of the working-man”—a paradise in which Melbourne, as the busiest and richest city in the Commonwealth takes the foremost place, this according to its people. The inhabitants of Sydney think differently, so do those of Adelaide and Brisbane. Yet, on the whole, I think Melbourne has the best reason for her proud boast. Wages may not be higher than they are in Sydney, while they are certainly lower than they are in Brisbane or the West; but the disadvantages are far less. The heat is never really unendurable, while at the worst it is stimulating, instead of enervating as in Sydney, only coming in bursts, with constant cool intervals between in which to recoup. For two or three days it may perhaps be over 100 in the shade, when the asphalt in the street bubbles and the pavement feels red-hot beneath one’s feet; but after about three days comes a change, and only once during eight whole years have I known the thermometer remain for a whole week above 100° in the shade. That was, if I remember rightly, in 1907, when whole families turned out to sleep in the public parks and gardens. But usually at the end of about the third day of heat there comes a terrific scorching north wind, laden with thick yellow dust, a thousand times worse, if the Australian would but believe it, than any London fog. It whirls in through every crack of window or door, it fills eyes, and lungs, and mouth, and nose till one feels on the verge of choking, and one’s skin is so gritty that one could smooth a plank with it—a demon of a wind, making every woman it encounters look a hag, and every man a fiend. If the women of Melbourne would really put their brains to work in the matter of complexions, instead of supporting a whole army of skin specialists and spending incredible sums upon creams and washes, they would see to it—holding a vote as they do—that every member of the municipal council were hung, drawn, and quartered. Then they would pour all their messes upon the streets instead of upon their faces, and go on appointing fresh councillors and killing them off, till they lighted on even “one righteous man” of sufficient intelligence to grapple with that dust-fiend, which draws such heartrending lines round pretty eyes, and plays such hopeless havoc with even the freshest and most youthful of complexions.

I speak feelingly, because I love Melbourne; because I adore its sunshine and the crisp, light air that might be so clear; because I hate to have its most perfect days—days that in the country are a pure delight—absolutely spoilt by what, one can but believe, is a remediable evil.

But I have wandered away from the red-hot, north-wind days, which I believe are thoroughly intractable—save, perhaps, under some immense system of afforestation. The only possible good point about this north wind is that when it gets to its very worst it usually changes. But oh! with such a flame of fury! One can almost hear it stamp its foot as it flings round. There is a whirl of skirts, an inarticulate shriek of fury, and—bang goes the door of the north wind. The thermometer drops, perhaps as low as to 70° within the hour, and one hurries home, folding oneself upon oneself as well as possible—shivering and shaking in the thin clothes, which had seemed of a blanket weight when they had been donned that very morning—to spend the evening over a flaming wood-fire, listening to the lovely drip-drip of rain upon the leaves, picturing how the earth is palpitating into growth beneath its caress, hugging to oneself the thought of the cool restful night, the glorious sleep, and the enchanting air of spring that the whole world will wear on the morrow, for the spring in Australia seems veritably to arise afresh after every shower.

In Melbourne gardens there is no dead season. The borders and beds are for ever full of surprises. It seems sometimes as if, for no particular reason, the flowers have a fancy for coming out; and out they come. It is a country where people please themselves. So, all the year round, one may gather roses from some bush or other, a little hectic, perhaps, but none the less beautiful for that; while the autumn and spring literally run to meet one another in the gardens, overlapping winter in the most cavalier fashion. I have seen willows along the Yarra bank all dark tresses of drooping twig, and two days—only two days—later, thickly veiled in a vivid green, not a hint of brown bark visible.

During the winter, which is marked more by an unpleasant damp and chilliness than real cold, will come sudden, fervently warm days, which bring all sorts of unlikely flowers into bloom, so that one sees Oriental poppies flaunting among the primroses, and heliotrope, and carnations out with the first daffodils, while it is seldom indeed that there is not pink bloom on the ivy-leaf geraniums.

Some writers on Australia complain that because most of the completely native trees do not shed their leaves, Australians do not know what a true spring is like. Perhaps they are right in one way; the longer a man has been starved the more completely will he appreciate a good meal when he gets it; and there is no such length of colourless winter days to struggle through in Australia—living only by this one hope, that the spring must come at last, however tardily—as there is in England, and therefore relief must be felt far less ardently. But against this let us weigh the thousand and one subtle surprises of Nature in such a country. Autumn, indeed, comes sobbing through the land, sweeping her heavy rain-drenched garments over lawn and border, till the flowers drop to earth, flattened, brown, and bedraggled; while “envious, sneaping” frosts nip the dahlias, and flush the roses with hectic tints. It is nonsense to say that the leaves do not fall, for they do, even from the native trees, not in a mass, it is true, but even more sadly, one at a time, as if the tree were with infinite reluctance slowly parting from each emblem of her youth, the tattered bark hanging in ribbons round her, the sport of every breeze; while everywhere in the cities and gardens there are English trees of all sorts to be seen, with leaves that fall in a fashion almost cheerful compared with the slow agony of their Australian compeers.

Then suddenly the sun breaks through the clouds. Brilliant patches of blue spread over the sky till they join in one unbroken sea of cobalt. One forgets to put fresh logs on the fire, which the sun is laughing out of countenance, flings open doors and windows, orders tea in the veranda, and fares forth with little packets of seeds and bits of sticks, to grub in the sweet teeming earth. What matter that in a couple more days winter may be back again? Anyhow, it is only a matter of three months, and that with innumerable such breaks.

The dahlias and the cosmos may have been all uprooted and the chrysanthemums have blackened in the borders; but by that time the narcissi are out, and the forget-me-not beds are alive with colour. There are violas, too, and grape hyacinths, and what in England we call “summer snowdrops,” and wallflowers, and periwinkles, while the japonica is jewelled with bloom, and the lawns are a glory of green. If the curtain of winter does slip down again, it does not matter much, for all these are sturdy people, and not easily discouraged; while when it lifts once more, the daffodils are ready to break into bloom, and the tulips and irises; while the wattle is a veritable masque of spring in itself.

With such a climate it seems extraordinary that the private gardens in Melbourne are not more of a success than they are. One reason, I believe, is that the people are too busy to trouble, another that they are too restless: they are always moving house—sometimes literally so, for it is no uncommon thing to meet a fair-sized wooden edifice coming along the road drawn upon wheels, by a long train of horses, and looking like a gigantic snail. I really believe the idea of settling down in one house for life would be—to use an Irishism—the death of any Australian. The servants in Melbourne will inform you, almost at the moment they enter your door, that they have “not come to stay”; and a man takes a new house in much the same spirit. I believe it is all owing to the lack of tradition. In England many of us have been born in the same house where our progenitors have lived for centuries, and where, perhaps, the descendants of our eldest brother may be expected to live for centuries longer; while we ourselves fare out in the world with the hope of founding some such enduring dwelling-place for ourselves, the need of a permanent home being inherent in our blood.

But though the Australian’s great-grandfather may have lived in some such fashion, it is more than probable that his actual grandfather lived in a waggon or a tent, and that both he and his son were, from the exigencies of the New Country, for ever moving on, seeking fresh pastures as the country became more open and settlers began to thicken.

The discovery of gold alone was enough to instil this restless drop into the blood of a people whose very presence in the country was indeed first proof of such a tendency. In the wholesale rush which followed the first discovery of gold in Bendigo and Ballarat, it must have seemed to onlookers as if the merely agricultural and commercial Australia would cease to exist. Vessels lay in the docks, rotting for the want of men to repair them and hands to work them; for the sailors and the dock hands, the Government clerks, the policemen, the shopkeepers and their employees, even the very domestic servants, all joined in the stampede to that delectable land, where a casual miner could earn from thirty to forty pounds a day; while the Governor, like a modern Alexander Selkirk, was left “monarch of all he surveyed,” with no one to dispute his rights, certainly, but equally with no one to obey his orders. In the year following the discoveries at Bendigo—1851—ten tons of gold were said to have been taken from Victoria, gold then being worth £4 an ounce, while a quarter of a million of presumably adventurous spirits landed in Melbourne, all eagerly confident of making their fortunes. When this lure was sufficient to induce people to risk the discomfort and peril of the long voyage in a sailing-ship, and all the dangers of an unknown land, it was not to be wondered at that the earlier settlers, who were already on the spot, relinquished their ideas of a pastoral life in favour of the enthralling possibilities of mining, and, forsaking their farms, joined in the general rush to the gold countries.

You will say that all this has very little to do with Melbourne gardens. But really it has a great deal to do with them, in that it has produced a people with very little of the real home-making spirit; while if a man will not trouble to make a home, it is certain sure that he will not trouble to make a garden. There was one man in Melbourne—I except, of course, the curator of the Botanical Gardens, whose work is too well known to need any comment—who veritably created a garden out of a rubbish-heap—a garden such as Australia needs, full of shade and greenery, and massed flower and foliage that helped to conserve the moisture of the ground. But there did not seem much money to be made out of it, and so one of the endless succession of Ministers for Agriculture—with that eternal craze to be up and doing which makes Australian officialdom so galling to the real worker—decided to change the garden into a dairy farm. It had not been in any way a useless appendage, for it was a public place, and thronged with people on Sundays and holidays; moreover, it had a horticultural school attached to it, where boys and girls whose parents lived near, and who could not afford to send their sons to some distant and costly agricultural college—for their daughters no other possible training-ground existed—could be taught fruit-growing and horticulture. At the time the place was started the then Minister for Agriculture was interested in fruit-growing; and by some good chance the next Minister happened to be the same, judging, rightly enough, that it was likely to be one of the most profitable minor industries of Victoria. But after them arose yet another Minister, whose interests were all on the side of dairy-farming, and the garden—to many a veritable oasis in the desert—was, as such, condemned. What has ultimately happened I do not know, but I believe that one flower-bed, some six half-starved cows, and as many boys, instructed after the methods of Mr. Squeers, somehow fight it out together, though certainly when I last saw it all the beauty and repose of the place had vanished for ever. Yet this is but a single example of the restlessness with which the country is infected, and the difficulty of producing and maintaining anything really staple under such constantly-shifting conditions.

The suburbs of Melbourne are beautifully wooded. If you climb to any eminence of the city, such as the fire-station, and look down and around, it seems as if it were indeed built in a veritable forest of trees, while you imagine the most beautiful gardens luxuriating beneath their shade. But, on the whole, you are doomed to disappointment.

The owners or tenants of the small villas seem to do the best with the scrap of ground that is at their disposal. But the cottagers make little or no effort to beautify their houses even when they are their own possessions; while the gardens of the wealthy people—say at Toorak, which is supposedly the most select suburb—are certainly very disappointing. One sees hideous corrugated iron fences round really fine houses, with gardens out of all proportion to their size; Gothic mansions, in a setting worthy only of a little villa at twenty pounds a year, looking like nothing so much as a very big joint on a very small dish; gardens where there is no shade nor retirement possible, and with the aggressive fence visible from every point; while the parsimony in the matter of water is almost beyond belief, fine shrubs that may have cost pounds, rare plants, and well-laid lawns, all being reduced to a khaki-coloured waste for the want of a few pounds spent in watering them. Really, I believe that if the gardens had to be watered with champagne the wealthy Melbournian would not hesitate; it is spending his money on mere water which he dislikes: that is the clouds’ job, and not his, and he spends his life waiting for them to do their duty, though he ought to know them better by now.

All over the country it is the same, in the great as well as the small. People seem to resent money being spent on any form of irrigation. They will plough and sow, they will reap when the crop is ready, and in any well-conducted climate that ought to be enough. But the Australian climate, like all beauties, has its very distinct failings, and in the matter of rain it is, to say the least of it, capricious. In most countries a caprice such as this, when once fully known, is provided against. In time, perhaps, the Australians also will grow to realize their country’s shortcoming, and a vast system of irrigation be carried out that will make a veritable Paradise of Victoria; but until that is accomplished, one can only say that its agricultural qualities are, like the curate’s egg, “good in parts.”

Still, something has been done, though any movement to further irrigation has received very lukewarm support from the public.

As early as 1884 an artesian well was formed at Sale, which for a number of years gave out 100,000 gallons a day. When that failed—whether from the choking of sand or from corrosion of the casing I do not know—a new bore was put down; but, as the water was impure, containing too much sulphuretted hydrogen, a third had to be sunk, which now yields as much as 145,000 gallons of water a day.

In 1906 eight bores were put down on one estate. Overnewton, Maribyrnong, all of which yielded good supplies of water for stock purposes, though from only one was water obtained fit for drinking; while quite recently a number of bores have been sunk on the Mallee, that drought-tortured district, where the almost ironical existence of a large underground lake has lately been discovered, the bore in one place striking water at 190 feet below the surface.

[Picture: Excavating an Irrigation Channel]

Under the direct control of the “State Rivers and Water-Supply Commission,” which came into force in 1906, are the Goulburn River Works, which include the Waranga Basin, with a storage capacity of 9,500,000,000 cubic feet; the Loddon River Works, with storage capacity of 610,000,000 cubic feet; and the Kow Swamp Works, with its capacity of 1,780,000,000 cubic feet. Then there are the Broken River Works, the Kerang North-West Lakes Works, the Lake Lonsdale Reservoir, the Lower Wimmera Works, and the Long Lake Pumping Works, the two irrigation areas of Nyah and White Cliffs, and some thirty distributory works; also the Mildura Irrigation Trust and the Geelong Water Supply, these last being governed independently of the Commission.

Now there is a plan mooted for damming up the Upper Goulburn River with a gigantic weir, that would have to be about 1,700 feet long, and, at the deepest part of the river, 140 feet high, by which it is estimated that a reservoir with a capacity of 60,000,000,000 cubic feet would be obtained, and 20,000 acres of gullies and river flats permanently submerged, making it the largest reservoir in existence.

Of course, this latter scheme is only _sur le tapis_, remaining, indeed, to quote the Australian Official Year-Book’s tactful statement, “in abeyance.” But still things are, as the American would express it, “beginning to hum” in the irrigation line, and when once the people grasp its enormous significance, it is impossible to believe that they will not only insist on more irrigation schemes being inaugurated, but also see to it that they are not allowed to remain “in abeyance.” Meanwhile, imposing as some of the figures may seem, when one thinks of the size of Victoria, even if all these already completed schemes were successful, they could but appear almost as inadequate for the necessary supply of water as was Mrs. Partington’s mop for its dispersal.

But, alas! even the schemes which have been carried through have not proved altogether successful. With her usual courage and tendency to rush her fences, Victoria embarked quite blithely in the first place on the Mildura scheme, which has at last struggled to success through a series of depressing failures, while the history of the other schemes has been far from cheering. The fact was, nobody knew anything about irrigation, or thought for a moment that there was anything to learn. In many places huge lengths of channelling were badly constructed, badly laid, and so badly placed that the land which would have profited most by the water was left completely dry, while the distribution was so wide that a very great deal was lost in the long channels. As a matter of fact, I believe that the estates in Australia are too large and the population too small to admit at present of a very great deal of effective irrigation, much as it is needed. For a good many years I lived on a sugar estate in Mauritius, which depended completely on irrigation. But, though one of the biggest estates in the island, it would have been altogether lost in any corner of an Australian station; while it was continually thronged with workers, always ready to correct any defective flow or clear out any blocked channel. As Victoria increases her country population, so also will she increase her chances of success in irrigation, for I feel it is only on small, densely cultivated farms that it can have a proper chance of paying for its working expenses. As it is, an extract which I must quote from a Ministerial statement, made not so very long ago, is anything but encouraging:

“The State has already spent £1,450,000 on irrigation works. Interest on this at 4 per cent. amounts to £98,000 annually; maintenance, about £47,000; receipts from rates and sales of water average about £35,000. The State irrigation channels command 1,104,000 acres of land, of which 218,000 acres were irrigated last year; but the crop return was trivial (over half the irrigated area was native grass), when compared with the results obtained from similar irrigated areas in other countries having no greater natural advantages.”

The great fault of the system seems to have been that, instead of paying a certain percentage on the value of their estates regularly, be the season wet or dry, just as a man will pay a life or fire insurance, the landowners have been allowed to pay only for the water they use. In this the holders of the largest areas were the most culpable. Their estates were extensive enough for them to be independent of very heavy crops, while the smaller men, to whom close cultivation was a necessity, and who used water—and therefore paid for it—at all seasons were in time of drought deprived of what they needed by the sudden demand made on the supply by the large holders; therefore it is not to be wondered at that the system resulted in what the _Melbourne Age_ has described as a “colossal failure.”

At last, however, a new policy has been instigated. In the future the distribution of water is to be controlled by State experts only, landowners who are within the irrigation area having to pay for it whether they use it or not, so that when holdings become smaller and settlers more plentiful there is every hope that the desert may indeed “blossom like a rose.” Æsculapius, in his “Birds,” tells us that it is from our enemies, not from our friends, that we must learn; and it is equally so with our failures. Australia has had a good many nasty jars, mostly caused by that impetuosity that is part of her political youth; but nobody can say that she does not profit by her mistakes, that she immortalizes them as some older countries do, or that she is willing for a moment to remain beaten.

Meanwhile, from the farmer’s point of view, comes the complaint that irrigation costs more than it is worth, and that he cannot get sufficient labourers to work irrigated land. But, with all due respect to the Australian farmer, this is mainly a case of having taken up more land than he can cultivate. He idealizes size. He would rather have a thousand acres of drought-stricken and useless land than he would have a hundred densely cultivated, and paying hand-over-hand. He himself will work incredibly hard in bursts, while his wife and children toil like slaves, but he does not care to face the constant, steady round demanded by what he would scornfully describe as a “pocket-handkerchief lot.”

The scarcity of labourers is indeed a difficulty, and it will remain a difficulty till the farmers provide more adequately for the comfort of their hands. The married man is altogether at a discount on the Australian station and farm. In the former the men, all more or less casual employees, live together in a large hut, served by a special cook; in the latter they live with their employer. Any accommodation for wife or family is very rare indeed, so that a married man who secures work in the country must, for the most part, maintain his belongings separately in lodgings in town. One hears a very great deal of virtuous indignation expressed in regard to the overcrowding of the towns, and the fact that men who are out of work there will not take billets as farm labourers. Also, on the other hand, that men do not marry as they should, that the legitimate birth-rate is so low and the percentage of illegitimate children so high. But if a man is normal and honest-minded, with a liking for clean living, he needs a wife and children and a home of his own. As a single man, wandering from station to station for shearing and harvesting, he has, on the whole, a very good time, plenty of company, plenty of money to spend, and no responsibilities. But the better sort of men do not fear responsibilities, and they want something more than a good time; so that, after a few years, they get sick of the wandering life and wish to settle down. In the country, however much they might desire it, there is, indeed, very little chance of this for farm labourers when once they are married.

They may, perhaps, have saved enough to start a tiny farm of their own, but it means ceaseless drudgery, and only too often a life of complete isolation both for husbands and wives, while the masters, whom they would be only too willing to continue to serve, have no place for them.

There is a great deal good in Australia that is not at all good in England, particularly in the life of the working-man; but I have found no parallel to the comfortable two-storied cottages, surrounded by good gardens, which one sees gathered round English farm-houses. When cottages such as these are built; when a labourer can settle down for life on one farm, and grow his own vegetables, keep poultry, and purchase a cow; and can see his own family growing up healthily and happily around him, then I believe that Victoria and her sister States will have no need to complain of her working-people all flocking to the big towns; while a new generation of agricultural labourers, bred and born to country life, will thus be insured, the number of illegitimate children be lessened, and emigration bear a more tempting face to the English labourer than it has done heretofore—so far, at least, as Australia is concerned.

This short-sighted policy of the banning and barring of the married man is evident in many other branches of Australian industry besides that of agriculture; and only the other day I cut the following out of the _Sydney Bulletin_, which has a happy knack of putting its finger directly on the weak places in the administration of its country:

“The old, old policy of baby-prohibition, this time from the Victorian Police Department:—‘Wardsman wanted at Police Hospital, Victoria Barracks, St. Kilda Road. Salary, £75 per year, with board. Applicants must be single, etc.’ It is a wonder the unfortunate baby ever contrives to get born at all, when one considers the number of awful bosses who fine the father in his whole salary if baby happens.”

All this time I seem to have got very far away from my first subject of gardens, but it has been merely from a natural discursiveness of mind, and not from any lack of legitimate material, for, indeed, the paucity of interest to be found in the private gardens of Melbourne is amply balanced by the beauty and variety of the public ones; among which the Botanical Gardens must be accorded the first place, both in importance and size—covering, as they do, eighty-three acres—exquisitely situated, for the most part on either side of a deep valley, along the hollow of which runs a thick grove of moisture-loving palms.

To the right of this, as one looks towards the city, is the Alexandria Avenue and the winding, silver ribbon of the Yarra, which is gradually being made as beautiful at close quarters as it now appears from the all-enhancing distance. Besides this deep valley, one elevation of which is topped by Government House, there is an infinitude of ups and downs, sweep after sweep of undulating greensward broken by many flower-beds and by jutting masses of trees, fringed with blossoms of every colour. It seems that anything will grow in Melbourne if only you water it enough—the old, old grievance again—and both subtropical plants and the hardiest English varieties flourish amicably side by side in the Botanical Gardens. Still, it is in the diversity of its trees rather than its plants that it really gains most over an English garden of the same sort, the shapes and colouring of the trunks, the almost human turn of the branches, the size and luxuriance of the leaves, proving an endless source of delight.

Best of all I love the gardens in the autumn, when all the borders are gleaming with the pale masses of chrysanthemums, bed after bed, border after border of them, tawny yellow and pale gold, white and amethyst, not one single glaring or sharply-defined tint, the very soul of colour. The autumn in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens is exquisite. The little, sharp chill in the morning air, the noon of clear warm sunshine; and the mist-haunted evenings, when standing on the high ground, one watches the trees grow ghostlike and unreal in the fading light, while the lamps of the distant town glimmer out beyond the grey veil of the river. Autumn evenings in England smell very good, but not as good as autumn evenings in an Australian garden, where the sun has been shining warmly through the day, drawing all the perfume from the blossoms, the fallen leaves, and humid earth. Then, there is not the same sense of sadness, of loss, which is inseparable from the autumn at home; for here it is not the end, but rather the beginning, the time when the burden and heat of the long summer is past, while life is all ready to start afresh during the damp coolness of the winter days; for, however cold it may be, it is always a cold that quickens, and does not deaden as does that of northern climates.

Besides the Botanical Gardens, ‘Melbourne boasts, among others, the Exhibition Gardens, famous for their roses, and the Treasury Gardens, windswept, and dirty, and desolate, their ragged garments incongruously patched by a Japanese garden, railed all round with spiked iron rails, into which no one but the gardener can ever penetrate, though city urchins sit on a mangy bank near and toss stones into it. Just beyond these gardens, separated from them, indeed, only by a road, lie the Fitzroy Gardens, which come first and foremost in the affections of many people. They have not the grandeur of the Botanical Gardens, though they display an even more perennial greenness and a certain wild charm of their own, and the lawns are not so smoothly kept, while in places the grass grows deliciously lush and high. There are more English trees there, too, and in the autumn the ground is all golden with fallen leaves, while there are fewer precisely-set flower-beds and more borders—a far more artistic arrangement, to my mind.

They are, indeed, lovely gardens—gardens where old Andrew Marvell might well have brought to life his all exquisite conception of “A green thought in a green shade,” if—and, alas! that there should be such an “if”—if only it had not been that—by some impish freak of, God knows what, Mayor, Corporation, or City Council—these sylvan lawns and glades are decorated, the horrible word stands well here, with a redundancy of statues, beside which some of Madame Tussaud’s figures might well be considered as works of art. I have often wondered that the puritanical City fathers have not raised objections to these figures on account of their classic want of drapery—the only classical thing about them—but perhaps it has been realized that they are too utterly hideous to arouse any feeling but aversion, even in the most ardent and youthful breast. However it may be, there they remain, and are likely to remain, till that golden age when education has been digested into something at least resembling cultivation.