Henry Mayers Hyndman

The Record of an Adventurous Life


Chapter VII
New South Wales

Liking Melbourne, its climate, its clubs and its people so much, I have often wondered why, in view of some very pleasant and flattering proposals made to me, I did not stay there. Certainly life under the Southern Cross is a good deal more agreeable than it is beneath the Great Bear as we see him. Perhaps I had the wander-fit on me, perhaps I felt with Bernal that it was “a little far from town,” perhaps I thought I could do more at home, possibly my present wife exercised a determining influence in drawing me back. At any rate, though there was much to tempt a young man like myself to remain, I went off to New South Wales and Sydney, determined to go on to Queensland, and farther north in Australia still. The latter part of this intention I never carried out. Rockhampton settled that. This is the town in which I verily believe the old joke originated that a man dying in that seven times heated furnace, sent up from below for his blankets. I got back as quick as I could. My recommendation to the world at large is: “If the spirit ever moves you to travel to Rockhampton, take counsel of your flesh and don’t.” Indeed, if you follow my advice even Brisbane will never rejoice in the light of your countenance. Leave these latitudes to the colonisation of the Chinaman and the Jap who for that matter, are not unlikely to absorb the whole continent; though I observe that the Labour Party of the Commonwealth, with barely five millions of inhabitants in that vast country all told, have piously declared in favour of a “White Australia.” Unless I much misread the signs of the times, the white man will have all he can do to hold his own in regions where he is much thicker upon the ground than he is in Australia.

There was a great deal of talk about the coming of the Chinaman even in 1869, and many a conversation I had with Charles Pearson, the author of The Yellow Danger, Gowen Evans, Collins Levey, and others about the prospects of a Chinese invasion as China got stronger. The subject is too large to deal with here; but I have the profoundest respect for that great race, having only seen them outside of their own country and employed them on work for which they had not been specially trained, and I feel confident their influence on the politics of the world is only just beginning afresh. That, under the competitive system, both they and the Japanese can beat the European in the struggle for life, I have no doubt at all; but the Chinese are the superior people.

I remember how much struck I was, when I was up at Beechworth, at what the Chinese colony there did, though they were certainly not well treated by the Europeans. It was announced that on a particular day there would be a great general demonstration, with procession and fêtes, in order to help to raise funds for the support of the local hospitals, where the Chinese who met with accidents or fell ill were treated with as much care as anybody else. They, like the rest of the people in this mining district, heard about the arrangements and recognising that this was a matter in which they were directly interested, they determined that the Flowery Land should not be poorly represented in the display. They sent to China for special decorations, on which they spent several hundred pounds in addition to what they expended on the spot. When the day arrived they formed up a procession of their own. It literally blazed with gold and colour, the great yellow standard of China in front, and the Chinese marching in perfect order behind dressed in the finest costumes, with armour, flags, and so on most artistically arranged and intermingled. A huge dragon, made up of scores or hundreds of men walking beneath a long carapace, advanced almost as if alive in their midst. So magnificent was the whole spectacle, that the Europeans abandoned their part of the show altogether as too hopelessly inferior, and lined up on either side, cheering the Chinese as they passed majestically along. This made a great impression upon me at the time, and now that the inventors of the mariner’s compass, gunpowder, and the art of printing are waking up to a sense of their own power and intelligence it makes a greater impression upon me still. For these, mind, were only ordinary Chinese miners gaining a moderate livelihood by very hard work and living on frugal fare.

That by the way. The Chinese and their future constitute a fascinating subject, and I have somewhere an article more than half written for the Revue des Deux Mondes, entitled Les Chinois hors de la Chine. I shall probably never finish it.

This was a period when great “rushes” of miners to new gold-fields were by no means uncommon, and sailing vessels as well as steamers were crowded with passengers anxious to make their way to these El Dorados of the south. Many of these miners were sailors who, seduced from their own business by the hope of making better “wages” by striking it rich in the alluvial diggings, had become experts in their new calling, and were as eager to reach the fresh discoveries as any. They were glad enough, too, to lend a hand on board, as long as by so doing they could get an extra knot or two out of the vessel, and thus hasten their arrival at their destination. The drawback to this employment of the old sailors was, that though they would go aloft to set any amount of sail, they would not set foot on the ratlines to take in a reef, no matter what the weather was, or how hard it might blow. There were therefore disadvantages in shipping on board sailing craft thus manned. Nor were steamers exempt at such times from unpleasantness for ordinary passengers.

A capital story is told about a trip made by Baron von Mueller, the scientist, and head of the Botanical Gardens at Melbourne. He had taken passage from Melbourne to the North, and had duly secured and paid for his berth, leaving his belongings in the cabin, while he went on deck to wave his farewell to his friends who were there to see him off. When the steamer cleared the Heads he went below to lie down. He had been forestalled. A big rough miner, on his way to join a “rush” to the Palmer diggings, lay at full length on von Mueller’s berth fast asleep. Little von Mueller stirred him up, and in answer to some good sound digger language given forth by his unwelcome guest at being thus roused from his well-earned slumbers, von Mueller said timidly, “If you please, sir, dis is my bunk, I think you have made a gross mistake.” More digger language of a still warmer nature advising von Mueller to find a bunk elsewhere, and meanwhile making certain suggestions which would not, if adopted, have tended to the professor’s personal comfort. Von Mueller again remonstrated gently, but to no purpose whatever. At last he said, “Vell, sir, if you insist upon taking mein bunk, perhaps you would be so very kind to give me my littel parcel of snakes from unter your pillow.” The fellow turned round, put his hand under his head, felt von Mueller’s specimen snakes wriggling about in their confinement, then made one bolt out of the berth and out of the cabin, and rushed up on deck. Von Mueller possessed his bunk in peace thereafter.

In Sydney I took no part in journalism, literature and politics, as I did in Melbourne, though I was quite intimate with W.B. Dailey, “Jack” Robertson, Julian Salomons, and others, and became acquainted also with Sir Henry Parkes. Dailey was as bright and brilliant a companion as I ever met, and in the course of the morning walks we used to take together, I had a good opportunity of judging of his ability. He well earned the position to which he afterwards attained. About the capacity of Salomons and Parkes also, there could be no question. But the cleverest man of them all was Robertson. How a half-educated politician with no roof to his mouth, and certainly no beauty of face or form, devoid also of any great power of expression, contrived to outweigh the extraordinarily unpleasant sound of his voice, and to hold his own and dominate as Premier a by no means easily handled assembly, was a mystery to me. His influence in private was as great as in public, and the manner in which he overwhelmed the New Zealand Ministers, Featherstone, Vogel, and others, who came over at this time on a political mission, was extraordinary to witness; for they were no fools either. I have always considered Robertson, in company with Robert Lowe, one of the most remarkable instances of a man of ability rising superior to physical drawbacks I ever encountered.

The charm of Sydney consists in the marvellous beauty of its situation and surroundings. It is to my thinking the most lovely city in the world. The inlet from Port Jackson called the Paramatta River is quite perfect; while the bays around with their exquisite semi-tropical trees and foliage running down to the water’s edge and crowning the hills above, are unequalled anywhere else. Shipping coming right up into the life of the city, yachts sailing up under the battery, a fleet of men-of-war anchored so close that to all appearance you could throw a biscuit on board Admiral Hornby’s flagship: such was Sydney as I recall it. I am told it is still finer now. But beautiful as it all was and much as I enjoyed the place it was a Sleepy Hollow after Melbourne.

And it nearly proved a final Sleepy Hollow for me. I was living at the Australian Club, but as they had no bedrooms I took a room close by. I used to read in bed with the light on a table by my side: a most laudable practice as all good housewives know. Of course, I frequently went to sleep and left the light burning. I had done so on one occasion and was sleeping soundly when I heard a great scuffling on the verandah outside. I jumped out of bed and found a policeman engaged in a violent struggle with a big black man who had a dagger in his hand. The officer had already got the best of it, when I joined in and the fellow was haled off to custody duly handcuffed. It appeared from the case as told in Court next morning, that the constable had seen the black man loitering about in a suspicious way and, following him up to my place, attacked him just as he was getting through the window, with the weapon in his hand, to come to relieve me of my watch and chain and other valuables. The culprit was certainly a most unprepossessing-looking negro, and I had to thank the policeman, I consider, for a lucky escape. The negro was given time to reflect upon the deficiencies in his moral character under conditions which gave him no opportunity for indulgence in his unregulated desires to possess other people’s property, and I gratified the guardian of society by parting with some of mine.

One of the pleasantest visits I paid in Australia was to a Run up country at Armadale, whither I journeyed with its owner, Mr. Dumaresq. By this time I had become quite accustomed to Australia and its method of life, and even tried to get from home the means to buy the Wallabadah Run which I could have purchased exceedingly cheap. But the Court of Chancery did not approve of advancing money for such a purpose, and my nefarious career as a possible squatter on Crown Lands, to the outrage of my social and economic conscience, was nipped in the bud. At Armadale I partook of and enjoyed the usual up-country life in which sheep and cattle, cattle and sheep figured with monotonous regularity. I learnt enough about ranching to know that it is by no means all pleasure and profit, and the solitary life of the shepherds, in particular, awakened my pity. I do not in the least wonder that these people, and the stockmen too, when they get their cheque after any months of solitude in the one case and of monotony in the other, too often “knock it down” by a wholesale drinking debauch in the nearest township or in the capital; being horribly fleeced and half poisoned by the publicans who supply them with liquor.

Neither did the lot of the “cockatoo farmer,” who takes up a small area in the bush and endeavours to make a living out of it, strike me as the sort of life at all suited to immigrants from home. It is hopelessly uphill work, and the frightful droughts which periodically afflict Australia, sometimes occurring year after year for seven years in succession, while they sweep away much of the wealth of the richest landowner and squatter, are absolutely ruinous to the small man. It is, too, the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that Australia either was then or is now a good place for the very poor to begin afresh their struggle with the world. As Mrs. Deas Thompson said to me in Sydney more than forty years ago: “There seems to be an impression at home that Australia is a haven of refuge for those who are in the last stage of consumption or the last stage of impecuniosity. As a matter of fact this country is fatal to both.” Bitterly opposed as I am to emigration of the flower of our people from Great Britain, on the ground that this drain is injurious in every way to the mother country, I am still more opposed to it because I have seen what terrible disillusions await the majority of those who go either to Australia or Canada, imagining that by hard sober work they can make sure of a good living for themselves and their families. In many cases they are worse off than they are at home.

I can imagine nothing more depressing than a long ride or drive through the Australian bush. The climate of New South Wales and Victoria is as a whole bright and cheerful and healthy. Wherever also European trees have been cultivated the appearance of the country is delightful, and the irrigation of good soil produces quite surprising results. But to this day I never look upon a blue gum-tree without a mournful feeling coming over me. I see again the long rows of these forbidding trees which I passed through at the stock-horse canter, that I take to be the old amble, as I rode down from Armadale to Grafton some two hundred and fifty miles. Hour after hour my mare and I went lolloping along alone. She, I believe, was as nearly asleep as I was. The beauty of this gait is that with a deep-seated saddle and pummels in front to protect the knees, you need not move an inch.

In the cool of the morning this was all very nice, and as I was travelling on a well-known and frequented track there was little reason to fear my being “held up” by bushrangers, or failing to obtain accommodation at intervals. I could look forward to reaching my journey’s end in due course and in safety. But as the sun got up and the next resting-place was not reached the intolerable weariness of those woeful gums oppressed me. They are the most dissipated-looking trees I ever beheld. Dante could well have represented them in his Inferno, in the shape of drunken men, as trees, standing around in sempiternal penitence for their orgies of the past. And the wretched things with their blotchy trunks and bare foliage give no shade. They seem to take pleasure in deluding you. Each leaf carefully turns its edge to the sun; though, so far as any advantage to the sun-baked traveller is concerned, it would make little difference even if their full surface were exposed to the light, as they are mere apologies for leaves when all is said. We read much in Australian books and Australian emigration pamphlets about the charms of the Australian climate and the delights of Australian scenery. The exquisite fern-tree gullies of Tasmania and certain Australian districts are rightly paraded as of almost unrivalled beauty; but the tree of trees in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, is the blue gum, and whereas I cherish most pleasing memories of Melbourne, Sydney, and some of the planted and semi-tropical regions, the nightmare of the gum-tree forests weighs upon me still.


Last updated on 30.7.2006