Читать книгу The Open Road in Victoria - Robert Henderson Croll - Страница 7

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A stately city—mark her lofty towers,

Her league-long streets with myriad lights agleam;

Here wealth and pride exhibit all their powers—

Is this the "village" of John Batman's dream?

—R.H.C.

For all its spreading acres how young Melbourne is! A native-born friend could tell me yesterday (and he is hale and hearty and good for many years yet) that his mother used to do the family washing in a tiny creek. That is the creek which runs through the centre of the present Fitzroy Gardens. It was then a pleasant burbling little stream, with its source near where the Presbyterian Ladies' College stands.

There was but small settlement in the neighborhood in those times. Later my friend and some other youngsters discovered a delightful playground which kept them in games for many a day. It was the foundations of the Public Offices, known to their generation as O'Shanassy's Folly. But O'Shanassy builded better than his critics knew; the huge pile is more than fully occupied, and the situation is one of the very best for its purpose—completely in the city, yet cut off from its noises.

Have you ever asked Young Australia what he thinks of a place? He has one superlative: "It's not bad!" Well, the view from the corner of Spring and Finders Streets, just below the Public Offices, is "not bad." That corner might well serve as a starting place for a little "walk-about," with an eye open for things of interest.

The first is certainly the outlook over the sunken railway lines which edge Flinders Street on the south. By the way, the advent of electric trains has pretty well removed the old name of "Cinders Street," which used to be applied to this part. Beyond is the Domain (where sometime, it seems imperative, our National Art Gallery must be), the outstanding point being Federal Government House on the crest of the rise. The slopes can look particularly attractive from here, especially in the Spring, when the long line of trees in Alexandra Avenue is breaking into soft bud. Even the raw redness of the railway structures in the middle distance is not without its value at certain times, as when a winter sun, about to set, catches it "in a noose of light."

The tall radio mast, lifting its head over the hill, has long been noticeable from this point, and now, midway between it and the outstanding bulk of the Victoria Barracks, a new note is struck by the fluttering flag which marks where the Great War memorial is to stand.

The eye travels comfortably along the green line of St. Kilda Road until arrested by the dome of Flinders, Street station. Sundown is the time to see it from here; then you will realise why that keen recorder of Melbourne's picturesque points, John Shirlow, has so frequently etched this dome. Against the background of a brilliant sunset, or outlined on a pile of cumulus, the effect is striking. Well down the street shows the more formal tower of the Fish Market, which recalls the fact that the dome of Flinders Street station covers the site of an older Fish Market still.

It is good to stroll on, noting in passing that St. Paul's spires are assuming definite shape, and that Flinders Street is rapidly being rebuilt. Resist for the present the fascination of the wharves, just a couple of blocks along, but pause long enough to reflect that it was probably about the Queen's Bridge (earlier titled the Falls Bridge) that John Batman, on June 8, 1835, wrote in his diary: "This will be the place for a village."

Then it was unbroken wilderness; to-day there are nearly a million people in the "village." And this has all happened within three generations. Turn up Elizabeth Street and mark the busyness of this thoroughfare—which runs all the way to Sydney. Note the huge buildings, so large that even the Post Office tower is hidden. Yet here was a watercourse a very few years ago. In my own time the digging of the street to lay foundations for the cable trams revealed a stretch of redgum corduroy which our fathers had found it necessary to put down to keep the street from swallowing travellers completely in wet weather.

The land rises on either side of Elizabeth Street as in a veritable stream. Come up to Queen Street, on the ridge, and stroll north a few blocks. The enclosure where Franklin Street crosses is the site of the Old Cemetery. The remains of the pioneers who slept here, and all their memorials, were recently removed to Fawkner to make way for municipal markets. An exception is the monument to John Batman, now re-erected at the corner of the Amateur Sports Ground (the old Friendly Societies' Reserve), in Batman Avenue.

But there is an older cemetery still, for the beautiful little Flagstaff Gardens, within a stone's throw of where we now stand, was once called Burial Hill, because of a few very early graves within it.

Times are changed indeed! This Flagstaff Hill was the centre of the social life of Melbourne in those early years, when Mr. Superintendent Latrobe controlled the destinies of the Port Phillip Settlement, and he might be seen taking the air here of a fine Sunday afternoon. In the memory of veterans like Mr. E. C. O. Howard and the late George Gordon McCrae it was one of the really charming spots of the locality. Its grassy surface was lawn-like and pleasant, and from its base stretched a beautiful blue lake—a real lake, nearly oval, and full of the clearest salt water. "Only man is vile"—the "improvements" of civilisation have not only obliterated the lake, but have supplied its place with a rubbish tip.

Another great attraction for our forefathers was the notice board with the latest shipping news, for the height of the hill (now apparently so much reduced) commanded a view of Hobson's Bay, and here stood the flagstaff which signalled the arrival and departure of the shipping. That was the link, almost the only one, with the world which these pioneers had left so far behind them. Isolated as they were, news was news indeed. It is easy to imagine their interest in this spot.

How much may be packed into '90 years! And in an hour we have walked across that period into an age differing tremendously from our own, for then there were no mechanical aids to work and play, and, as Blamire Young once pictured it:

"Men wore curly hats and funny clobber."