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Perambulation of Sydney—The market—Dungaree settlers over their pipes—The wharfs—The harbour by moonlight—The St. Giles's of Sydney

IN 33° 48' S. lat. and 151° 17' E. long. the precipitous mountain-like wall of rocky coast of New South Wales is broken by a gigantic chasm; the crags on the south side are called the South Head, those on the north the North Head. Passing between the two, the voyager finds himself navigating a capacious arm of the sea, with both the banks picturesque as fairy land. Here points bare, grey, and bolder heaped jut out into the stream; and there the waters retire back into deep bays, mazing off among shores clad with evergreens and winding away into far-off tortuous channels, that to the mariner's glass yield back nothing but a tale of thwart-currents and impenetrable shadows. Piloted dexterously up the main inlet, passing the Sow and Pigs (a larger and some smaller sunken rocks dangerously scattered in the channel), and sailing on past Garden and Pinchgut islands (two small scrub clad piles of hoary stones, each standing solitary amidst the whistling winds of the Stream), you come, after several miles, to the town of Sydney. The main stream goes onward, forming the Paramatta, and, in a minor branch, the Lane Cove rivers: over a great ridge-backed promontory, that stands out in no easily describable shape among the irregular waters on the left, is scattered the town of Sydney; adjacent to which in the broad waters of the harbour is Goat Island, an insulated rock famous in the records of convict discipline. On getting sight of Sydney you see a waterside town scattered wide over upland and lowland, and if it be a breezy day the merry rattling pace of its manifold windmills, here and there perched on the high points, is no unpleasing sight. It gives, even from the distance, a presage of the stirring, downright earnest life (be it for good or evil) that so strongly characterizes the race that lives, and breathes, and strives around: a race with whom it is one of the worst reproaches to be a crawler. Looking a little more narrowly at the town you observe that it has several very large piles of building; the most of these, as may be supposed, are offices erected by the Government with the profusion of convict labour which it has had at its command, and with no stint of an excellent free working sandstone, which breaks up in masses through the ground in every quarter of Sydney, and on every shore of the hill bound bays of the adjacent country. Toward the extremity of the promontory on which Sydney is built the ground is very steep and lofty in the middle; and this, together with a concurrent tendency in the flats presented in places by the freestone strata, has led to ranging the houses in this part of the town in a series of terraces rather than streets. Anchoring just under the south side of this acclivity, off the King's Wharf, you observe most of the rows of houses looking down upon you from above one another's roofs. A moderately wide street is left in front of each row, but so full of shelves and jump-ups as to be of little use except to foot-passengers; and even to require for their accommodation, in many places, sets of steps cut in the rock or laid more regularly by the mason.

It was just as twilight darkened into the night of an evening in early summer of the year 182-,* that the good ship ——, in which I had made my passage from London, dropped anchor in the very spot I have indicated, a few fathoms off shore abreast of the King's Wharf. My apprenticeship to a ——, in the city of London, had just terminated, and I had a very good knowledge of house-carpentering beside. Of course my reason for emigrating to New South Wales was the hope of bettering my condition. I had been informed, and I found it correct, that very much higher wages than those given in England were earned by mechanics in this colony: consequently I had no occasion, upon arrival, to regret on this account the step I had taken. My last near relative had died a few months before my indentures expired, and had left me something more than 130l. in cash, to be paid on my reaching the age of twenty-one: this was only three months after my apprenticeship expired. After laying out about 40l. in clothing, a few standard books to read on the voyage, and such sea-necessaries of the eatable and drinkable sort as were not supplied by the ship, I thought myself very fortunate in obtaining a good passage in the steerage for 25l. By the advice of the person who negotiated my passage, I took a letter of credit for the remainder of my money on a gentleman who was represented to me as being one of the most respectable settlers in the colony. My disappointment and disquietude may be easily imagined when, on going on shore the evening of my arrival in Sydney, and making inquiries at the Australian Hotel for the address of this individual, I was informed that he was an insolvent, and that, from what was as yet publicly known of his affairs, it was expected he would pay but a very small dividend. If I had not the reflectiveness of age, however, I had the hopefulness of youth; and as I happened to have made inquiries about the condition and remuneration of my trade in the colony, previously to those which met so discouraging an answer, the blow from one source was, to a certain extent, compensated by the support derived from the other. Partly also I was a little ashamed to show all I felt, for I had a companion ashore with me who was rather more fond of laughing at people's misfortunes than of consoling the sufferers under them. After smoking a couple of cigars and being initiated into that frightfully pernicious but common habit of the colony, drinking rum neat out of wine-glasses, we went out, dark as it was, for a stroll down the town. My companion was the second mate of the vessel, and had visited Sydney twice before; and as ships generally stopped five or six weeks there, he had had every opportunity of becoming well acquainted with the place. At this period Sydney was but ill lighted: only a few lamps were scattered throughout the whole length of George Street (the main thoroughfare), which, from the King's Wharf to the end of the houses at the foot of the Brickfield Hill, can scarcely be less than a mile and three-quarters.

[* In order to avoid giving any personal offence, blanks are left in this and all similar cases, so as to avoid any identification. The facts are all with which the public are interested.]

As we walked down George Street we found Sydney, according to custom during the first hour of a summer's night, all alive, enjoying the cool air. The street was clear of vehicles, and parties of the inhabitants, escaped from desk and shop, were passing briskly to and fro, in full merriment and converse. At the main barrack-gate the drums and fifes of the garrison were sounding out the last notes of the tattoo. In Sydney the barracks occupy a noble sweep of ground in the very centre of the town; the best spot, in fact, for general commercial purposes that it a spot that really ought, without further delay, to be resigned to the corporation for those many important uses to which it could under their direction be applied. Leaving the long line of barrack-wall behind us we at length reached the market-place. The fine building that now occupies the spot under the same name, was then not even in projected existence; but the settlers drove their drays into the open area amidst the old shedlike stalls that here and there stood for the occupation of dealers; and the whole was surrounded by the remains of a three-rail fence. As we wandered through the rows of drays and carts I could not but remark a striking difference between them and the contents of the carts of any general market for the produce of the land at home. There was no hay, but its place was abundantly supplied by bundles of green grass, much of it almost as coarse as reeds, and evidently produced by a very wet, rank soil. In other carts we found loads of such vegetables as the country and the season yielded; some of these, we were given to understand, were grown in the Curryjong Mountains, no less a distance from Sydney than forty miles. In several carts we found sacks of last year's maize; and in a very few, some sacks of last year's wheat. Two drays only were loaded with new wheat, and these, we were told, were the property of rich settlers. It was very much the custom of the poorer settlers at this time, and indeed is so still, to sell all or the greater part of the wheat they grow, and live upon their Indian corn. This I was much surprised at before necessity, at a future period, had compelled my palate to reconcile itself to the peculiar flavour of maize-flour, cooked in its various modes; but once used to it, I have always since eaten it with much relish, and have consequently ceased to wonder at its common use by others. It is a common assertion, that the poor Australian settler (or, according to colonial phraseology, the Dungaree-settler; so called from their frequently clothing themselves, their wives, and children in that blue Indian manufacture of cotton known as Dungaree) sells his wheat crop from pure love of rum; and having drank the proceeds, then of necessity lives the rest of the year on maize. But this seems to be only partially true. The fact appears rather, that wheat being the most costly grain, many eat maize from economy, selling the wheat to procure meat, tea, sugar, tobacco, and clothing; and few persons who have tasted the deliciousness of a corn-doughboy eaten with the salt pork which constitutes so large a portion of their animal diet, will consider their taste altogether perverted.

After our cursory look at the market—if look it could be called which was performed in the dark—we went into "The Market-house." I really forget whether this was its name by licence or whether it was merely so called on account of being the principal rendezvous of the market-people. It, however, was a regular licensed public-house; but I should suppose at this time there were nearly twice as many unlicensed grog-shops as licensed public-houses in the town of Sydney, in despite of the constables and a heavy fine. In the large tap-room of the Market-house (which we entered more for the purposes of curiosity than anything else) we found a strange assemblage; and stranger still were their dialect and their notions. Most had been convicts: there were a good many Englishmen and Irishmen, an odd Scotchman, and several foreigners, besides some youngish men, natives of the colony. Amongst them was present here and there a woman, apparently the wife of a settler. The few women were all sober and quiet, but many of the men were either quite intoxicated or much elevated by liquor. The chief conversation consisted of vaunts of the goodness of their bullocks, the productiveness of their farms, or the quantity of work they could perform. Almost everybody was drinking rum in drams, or very slightly qualified with water; nor were they niggard of it, for we had several invitations from those around us to drink. I could not however, even at this early period of my acquaintance with this class of people, help observing one remarkable peculiarity common to them all—there was no offensive intrusiveness about their civility; every man seemed to consider himself just on a level with all the rest, and so quite content either to be sociable or not, as the circumstance of the moment indicated as most proper. The whole company was divided into minor groups of twos, threes, and fours, and the dudeen (a pipe with stem reduced to three, two, one, or half an inch) was in everybody's mouth. I think there was not an individual in the room, but one female, who did not smoke more or less, during the brief time we sat there. Their dresses were of all sorts: the blue jacket and trousers of the English lagger, the short blue cotton smock-frock and trousers, the short woollen frock and trousers, fustian jacket and trousers, and so forth, beyond my utmost power of recollection. Some wore neckhandkerchiefs; some none. Some wore straw hats, some beavers, some caps of untanned kangaroo-skin. And not a shin in the room that displayed itself to my eyes had on either stocking or sock. Of course I speak here only of the very lowest class; such as were derived from the lowest rank at home, and who, whatever advantages they had had in the colony, still continued unexalted by improved opportunities, unstimulated by hope, and making no efforts beyond what were necessary to supply their mere animal wants. To the same mart came down others in various degrees superior; many, particularly among the young natives, of plain but solid worth: but this was not the place to meet with them.

In traversing George Street to this point we had, to speak without very great exactness, run down the middle of the neck of land on which I have (for want of a better term) described Sydney as being built. Having started with the vessel on our left hand, my friend proposed that we should now strike right across from George Street to the other principal wharf, the market wharf. For as the King's wharf lies toward the seaward end of the promontory on the one side, so the market wharf lies nearly at the landward end on the opposite; just below the higher ground where the market is held, and within good bow-shot of it. To it come great numbers of market boats to unload the various produce of the settlers' farms on the Paramatta and Lane Cove rivers, and the circumjacent country. The boats also that come from up and down the coast, outside the harbour, unload here. Amongst the chief cargoes to this wharf is timber, of which great quantities always lie stacked upon the quay. It may be said generally, that it is the wharf for articles of home produce, and, therefore, clear of duty; whilst to the King's wharf more usually comes foreign merchandise. One of the excellences of the site of Sydney is that either deep water washes the rock on which it is built, or, where it does not, a good depth can with very little difficulty be artificially obtained by a short jetty. And as the circumference of the promontory, without going minutely into bays and inlets, must be at least 2½ miles, this really amounts to the town having a wharf of that length; at the same time the vessels are sheltered very nearly as entirely as if in dock, and there is good anchorage. All this, however, I knew not then; but it gave me no little delight at the time, to find that I had come across the land to what seemed another sea. There was not a creature on the wharf but ourselves, and the continual melancholy plash of the flooding tide, among the boats that lay moored in numbers close together, made the hour and the scene appear more lonesome still. The moon was just glinting over the dark wooded hills, so that I could plainly enough see the masses of forest on the opposite shore. What a wonderful advance had this same locality experienced when, a few years afterwards, I bade adieu to it for England! This solitary landing-place had become a street, and busy steamers at the same hour came roaring past with their teeming cargoes from the northern and southern settlements. The British Government cannot understand the value of the Australian colonies, or it would never treat them as it does.

My guide and self now pursued our way, in a retrograde direction, along the side of the waters of Darling Harbour, then called Cockle Bay, until we reached a position parallel to which, on the opposite side, our vessel lay anchored. We then struck right up across the ridge toward it, or rather, as nearly straight across as crags and quarries, and rows of houses would allow. My guide had brought me this way, to point out to me another of the low-life sections of Sydney; in fact, its St. Giles's and Wapping in one. From the earliest times of the settlement there congregated on the steep ridge above the King's wharf all the worst characters of this penal colony—the felon, whose ill-directed punishment had only rendered him more obdurate, cunning, and slothful; the prostitute, who (if such a thing can be) had sunk yet lower; the fence, watching for a livelihood by plundering the plunderer; many who, without great positive vices, a sort of brutelike ignorance and uncouthness had rendered it impossible for more orderly and rational society to amalgamate with itself; and many drawn into the vortex of ruin through their mere want of direction, or energetic resolve for either good or evil. To these it is painful to be compelled to add British sailors, who, admitted into no respectable company in the ports where they land, naturally seek female society, where only they can find it, in the brothel. Such were the inhabitants of the section of the town we here passed through. We went into two houses, the one called "The Black Dog," a licensed house, the other close beside it, an old dilapidated place, properly enough called "The Sheer Hulk," which had been deprived of its licence on account of the practices and characters admitted by its landlord; it was, however, still occupied, and as the occupier was no longer under the apprehension of losing his licence, the scenes displayed nightly were of tenfold worse character than ever. So that detection and legal evidence were evaded, all that was cared for by the scoundrel who held it was attained. At the present time I shall not enter into further description of this den, than by remarking that we found it full to suffocation of the lowest women, sailors, and ruffians, who supported themselves by waylaying and robbing and often murderously wounding any intoxicated sea officer, newly-arrived emigrant, or up-country settler, who might chance to wander into their infernal precinct; and as part of the occupation of the women was to act as lures, of course this was no rare occurrence. The door was kept barred, and there was an outlet behind up the rocks. Hereafter, an incident in the course of my narrative will render it necessary for me to give a more particular account of the forlorn and infamous abodes of this part of the town. This night we soon left them, and passed down into George Street: here we parted—my companion to his duties on board the ship, as he had only obtained leave for four hours; I to the bed I had engaged at the Australian hotel, a few yards from the wharf.