DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 50
By James Smith

THE  EAST  1...

THE eastern division of Victoria, of which the one hundred and forty-fifth degree of longitude may be roughly taken as the western boundary, comprehends within its limits some of the grandest mountain scenery the colony can boast, receives the heaviest rainfall, and for both these reasons contains the sources of some of its most important rivers.

Leaving Melbourne for Frankston by the train, which starts from the Prince’s Bridge station, the route lies through the populous suburbs of Richmond, South Yarra, Hawthorn and Toorak. Most of the eminences, both in Toorak and Malvern, are crowned with villas and mansions standing in the midst of well-planted and well-kept demesnes dark with pines or bright with deciduous trees of exotic origin. These are succeeded by the sandy plateau of Caulfield, with its racecourse overlooking a wide extent of flat country, and with the blue waters of the Bay, gleaming in the distance. Passing Glen Huntly and the embryonic suburban towns of North Road and McKinnon, the railway skirts the eastern shore of Port Phillip and provides the inhabitants of those localities with two stations. Between South Brighton and Mordialloc, a distance of six miles, Highett, Cheltenham and Mentone intervene; the first and second of these places have recently sprung into existence, and the third is an old established town surrounded by market gardens from which a great deal of vegetable produce finds its way to Melbourne nearly, all the year round. Mordialloc, lying, at the mouth of the creek from which it has borrowed its name, has the advantage of a fine beach with a thick grove of ti-tree scrub fringing it for sonic distance; and at holiday times it is the resort of hundreds of pleasure-seekers, for whose accommodation there are two good hotels. Beyond this, the railway skirts the great Carrum Swamp for a distance of nine miles and terminates for the present at Frankston, from which two lines, possessing a strategic importance in connection with the coast defences, will diverge to Dromana on the Bay, and to Sandy Point in Western Port, respectively. Frankston is prettily situated at the mouth of the Tangenong Creek, at a short distance from the foot of Mount Eliza, one of three eminences which help to diversify the scenery on the southeast coast of the Bay. A large tract of open country, at the back of the town, of the same healthy character as the country, at Aldershot. is generally selected as the camping ground and field for the manoeuvres of the land forces of the colony in Easter week, as it is within a few miles of either of the two objective points which would probably, be selected by an enemy for the landing of an expedition to march on Melbourne; while it also enables the Victorian navy to co-operate with the defenders on the one hand, or to represent a hostile squadron endeavouring to throw a regiment of infantry upon shore on the other. These sham engagements, which are conducted with great spirit, and accompanied by a review of the permanent force and the volunteer militia, upwards of five thousand strong, attract, when the weather is favourable, a great concourse of visitors from Melbourne and the district surrounding Frankston.

A good coach road crosses a somewhat uninteresting tract of country between Frankston and Hastings. The latter is a straggling village, lying on the edge of a salt marsh which stretches down to the shallow waters of an extensive lagoon flecked with the white wings of the sea-birds that perch on the green islets left bare by the receding tide. Along a winding channel defined by piles, a small and incommodious steamer makes its way, with more noise than speed, through the inner western passage to Cowes on Phillip Island, where a crescent shaped sandy beach, sheltered from the southerly and southwesterly gales by a ridge of high land at the back, is overlooked by an excellent hotel, renowned for its choice cookery, and much frequented by Visitors, not more on account of its table than by, reason of the secure sea-bathing to be enjoyed close at hand and the genial climate of the spot. On the mainland to the eastward are the remains of a brick structure, near which has been found a French cannon ball; and from this it has been assumed that a landing was effected here by Captain Baudin, the French navigator, in the year 1802, and that these are the evidences of the fact.

The return journey can be made either by steamboat or by railway, and the former route has been described in a previous chapter. That romantic and mountainous southeastern corner of the colony known as Gippsland is to be reached by a line of rail which diverges from Caulfield in an easterly, direction and passes through Rosstown and Murrumbena —stations which have been established in anticipation of settlement growing up around them. But Oakleigh, a little farther on, is a town steadily increasing in importance, and has an environment of vegetable gardens covering an area of something like eight hundred acres. At Spring Vale, fourteen miles from Melbourne, the limits of suburban extension have been reached and passed. Tracts of rushy heath, sprinkled with gorse and broken in upon here and there by a market garden or a newly-planted orchard, offer a generally uninviting prospect to the eye. The country presently slopes to the eastward, and both the timber and the herbage improve in character until Dandenong is reached. This is a pretty little town on the banks of a creek of the same name, and well within view of the massive ranges similarly characterised. The neighbourhood is favourable alike to the farmer and the grazier, and the weekly market which is held there will remind anyone just fresh from the old country, of similar marts for corn, cattle, pigs, poultry and dairy produce held on a Saturday in ancient cathedral cities in the west of England. Beyond Dandenong, a thick jungle of ti-tree scrub extends from Hallam’s Road to Narre Warren, where the surface of the country begins to undulate, and the line traverses some rich pastures where sleek cattle and horses with shining coats stand knee-deep in the succulent pastures. The village of Berwick is surrounded by dairy farms and paddocks which are being cultivated for green crops; but when the wooded heights of Beaconsfield have been passed the aspect of the landscape undergoes a marked change, for ti-tree and other scrub stretches away southward as far as the eye can range. At Pakenham, the Baw Baw mountains begin to loom in view —a pale blue silhouette sharply defined against the more pallid azure of the sky. Through four miles of scrubby bush —with here and there a little oasis of cultivation, or a patch of dead saplings wasted by fire which look like red coral as the still shines on them —the train pursues its course to Nar-Nar-Goon, where the spoils of a forest are awaiting transport to Melbourne, and the wayside copses teem, with stacks of firewood. At Tynong, a few miles farther on, nothing but timber, living or dead, meets the eye; and as the railway climbs to a higher level, the underwood becomes more dense and the loftier growth more majestic. And anybody who alights at one of the sylvan stations on the line and plunges for a short distance into the forest soon finds himself in the midst of scenes in which the wildness and grandeur of primitive nature —the forest solitudes that maintain the virgin beauty which has been their characteristic for unnumbered and innumerable centuries —are blended with the amenities and the humanising influences of cultivation. Here are the evidences of the conflict which has been going on ever since the dawn of creation —man wrestling successfully with the forces of nature, subjugating them to his imperious needs, and making the earth smile with fruitfulness and rejoice with plenty. Here are the solemn cloisters of the immemorial woods, with loftier columns in their leafy aisles than any gray old minster in the mother country could present, and with over-arching, vaults of ‘tracery more exquisite in pattern and more intricate in detail than Gothic sculptor in his happiest inspirations could devise; and they are alive and

Musical with birds that sing and sport
In wantonness of spirit; while below
The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect,
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade
Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam
That waked them into life. Even the green trees
Partake the deep contentment, as they bend
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene.

Underneath those long-drawn aisles of never-failing verdure are avenues of tree-ferns, overarching with their curving fronds the ice-cold runnels which hurry downwards as if they were the bearers of some joyful message to the valleys below; while the air is filled with aromatic odours from the feathery shrubs which constitute the tangled but not impenetrable underwood. From stony ledge to pebbly pool, those mountain springs hold on their rapid course enveloped in a moist and fragrant atmosphere of mystic twilight. The sunshine cannot reach them, nor the starlight quiver on their dimpled faces. In solitude and seclusion, where, during ages upon ages, Nature could have had no human witness of her works, how actively, patiently, tenderly and lovingly she has laboured —nothing neglected, nothing overlooked. Not a stone upon which she has not laid a velvet covering of greenest moss; not a dead giant of the forest whose recumbent ruin she has not beautified with an embroidery of young and delicate foliage; not a fern-tree stem which does not blossom with minute mimic fronds in finitely small copies of the magnificent originals; not an inch of ground which does not manifest the affluence and the amazing diversity of her creative power. The forest trees in lofty brotherhood —each worthy to be "the mast of sonic great ammiral" —rise, like stately pillars, for a hundred feet in height before she suffers them to put forth branch or leaf; and then they must breast the hurricane and brave the lightning. All her affection and her forethought she reserves for tie fragile shrubs and flowers which she has woven into a robe of tapestry for the earth below. That beneficent mother leaves her Titanic offspring to wrestle with the thunder stroke and to grapple with the whirlwind —to be shattered by the one or overthrown by the other. But in the calm nooks of these sequestered hollows nestle the small creatures who engage her fondest care —wildings and parasites and tiny flowers in wonderful variety. All the conditions of vigour and vitality surround them, and the very fern-trees seem to derive some sap and sustenance from the dead timber of the forest Goliaths that lie rotting at their feet. Treading the silent and leafy wilderness, the philosopher or the poet travels back in imagination, and bridges centuries with a flash of thought. What a span across the ages is here suggested between the surrounding signs of the advancing civilisation of to-day and those dim and distant periods when strange monsters —winged serpents and armoured lizards —lived in the darkling forest tarns and cut the air with scaly plumes! Coming down to within a comparatively recent date —only a few years ago —the shy native had here his home, and now he has disappeared, leaving no evidence of his sojourn in this forest solitude. But cleared spaces are here also, where tokens of settlement are numerous, associating themselves with pleasant thoughts of homesteads and family life and the domestic affections, of farms and gardens and fruitful orchards won from the primeval wilderness, of the varieties and activities of agricultural life, of the busy drama of material progress enacted by men and women with sturdy arms and steadfast determination, and of the gradual formation of a coherent community, out of a scattered settlement

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that tops the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade
For talking age and whispering lovers made.

A place, which bears the grim name of Cannibal Creek, appears to be a settlement composed exclusively of splitters, and their primitive huts are huddled closely together as if the solitude of the position and the awesome stillness and seclusion of the forest, which make themselves felt at night more especially, had heightened the craving for neighbourhood and association. At Bunyip the rudiments of a village creep up the hill-side and look down upon a dismal thicket of ti-tree growing on the edge of the vast Koo-wee-rup Swamp, covering many square miles of country, and almost concealed from view by a mass of bulrushes; while above the underwood rise the charred trunks of many a tall tree, increasing the desolation of the scene. Longwarry is also a settlement of splitters, but contains some hotels and stores of by, no means uninviting aspect. Here the timber begins to assume still more grandiose proportions, and the tall columns close up their ranks, while the undergrowth becomes singularly vivid in colour and diversified in character. The railway cuttings show a great depth of splendid chocolate soil, and the exuberance of the vegetation bespeaks the richness of the nutriment upon which it draws for its support. Drouin is picturesquely situated in the midst of a forest presenting "a boundless contiguity of shade." It is the centre of an important trade in timber, and though its sawmills are rarely idle the supplies upon which they operate do not seem to have materially lessened the density of the thickets from which they have been derived. Although the town is very young in years, and hemmed in on every side by the virgin forest, it contains all the usual official and commercial institutions. From Drouin the railway ascends to the summit of a ridge, and passes through more chocolate soil to Warragul, in the neighbourhood of which a considerable amount of selection has taken place, and the number of gigantic trees that have been tinged is almost incalculable just beyond Bloomfield a fine vista: opens out where a long straight avenue has been cut through the forest, and at the extremity of this far-stretching perspective a wooded range stretches across and closes in the narrow opening. The sylvan glades begin to be brightened by, tree-ferns and the fresh foliage of the blackwood tree. Darnum is passed, and then Yarragon, another settlement in a clearance which has been won from the forest by such arduous toll as it would be scarcely improper to designate as heroic, seeing how great re the proportions and how lofty is the height of the trees which have to be felled, and how closely they are packed together. Beyond this settlement, with its noble background of wooded highlands, stretches all extensive swamp reaching as far as Moe. At Trafalgar, or Narracan, a railway station overrun with creepers arrests attention by reason of its novelty. In the surrounding forest a great deal of settlement has taken place, and the soil, enriched by the humus of countless centuries, offers a liberal return to the labours of the husbandman. Shortly after leaving Narracan, a fine view is obtained to the northward of the imposing ranges which have Mounts Baw Baw, Mueller and Erica for their flanking bastions. Moe, the next station on the line, has the advantage of picturesque surrounding’s in combination with hopeful prospects of a more prosaic character; for at no great distance to the southward, on what is known as McDonald’s Track, a seam of coal is being worked, and expectations are entertained of extensive deposits being found at a greater depth. The quality of the mineral resembles that of the bituminous coal of Virginia; and it seems not improbable that the whole of the basin, through which the Mundarra, the Morwell, and the Latrobe Rivers flow, may, eventually be ascertained to rest upon a carboniferous formation. Meanwhile, Moe is the centre from which a large area of cultivated country, draws its supplies, and is already a well-equipped little town. Thence the train descends into the plains, and the coast range traces its undulating outline against the sky, in a southerly direction. Morwell is pleasantly situated on the banks of a river similarly named, and lies in the midst of a pretty country in which both the sportsman and the angler may, find plenty of pastime, for game is abundant and streams are numerous. Here, too, the indications of a coalfield lying underneath are encouraging. At Mirboo, which is reached by a branch line from Morwell, passing the agricultural settlements of Yinnar, Boolarra, and Darlimurla, a seam of coal has also been struck of sufficient thickness to justify its systematic development whenever the difficulties of transporting its produce to the railway shall have been overcome. The whole of the country between Mirboo and Morwell consists of magnificent alluvial soil, well-watered by numerous creeks, and enjoying the heaviest rainfall in Victoria, the yearly average exceeding fifty inches. This district lies near the headwaters of the Tarwin and the Franklin, flowing to the south, and those of the Morwell which runs in an opposite direction. Every available acre seems to have been selected for agricultural settlement, and in the near future the country will become a veritable land of Goshen, and the grandchildren of its hardy pioneers will reap a harvest of affluence from the severe and strenuous labours of those who went forth into the forest with the manly determination to reclaim the wilderness and to make themselves a home in its previously unbroken solitudes. To do this, has involved no small amount of courage, of patient endurance, of steadfast hope, of physical strength and of pertinacious toil. Most of the selector’s capital consists of these admirable qualities, for his stock of ready money is usually exhausted by the time he has ringed and felled a few trees upon the site of his future homestead, erected a hut of slabs and bark, furnished it with a trestle bed and blankets, a rudely-constructed table and bench, a few cooking utensils, an axe, a spade, a crosscut saw, and a supply of flour, tea and sugar. He knows that he must "shun delights and live laborious days," and when he has broken up a few perches of land and put in his first crop, he is not unfrequently compelled to seek for work in the neighbourhood at fencing or road-making, in order to maintain himself until the "kindly earth" shall have yielded him her increase. In some cases the free-selector, who is fortunate enough to be the possessor of a horse and to be quick and dextrous in the use of the shears, sets out in the beginning of August for the woolsheds in the south of Queensland, or in the north of New South Wales, to fulfil a yearly engagement at sheep-shearing, and makes his way downward from station to station, through Riverina and the Murray country into Victoria, returning in time to gather in his own crops, and with cheques in his pocket representing at least a hundred pounds. He is thus enabled to purchase a few head of stock or a better description of plough, to build a more commodious hut, and to supply the wife and children, for whom he has been making a home in the bush, with such articles of wearing apparel as they may stand in need. There is plenty of hard work and very little recreation in such a life, and the most lively imagination would fail to invest its prosaic realities with a halo of romance or with an air of poetry.

Resuming the journey in an easterly direction from Morwell, the railway passes through the rising centre of Traralgon, which is composed for the most part of buildings so substantial in their character as to attest the confidence which is entertained in the stability of the resources of the surrounding district. About Flynn’s Creek, nine miles beyond Traralgon, the country becomes more sparsely timbered. Broad glades of park-like land open out on either side, and the level character of the landscape is agreeably relieved by the ranges which bound it on the north and south. Rosedale is environed by cornfields and pastures, and presents all the evidences of prosperity springing from remunerative husbandry. Thence the railway traverses a far-stretching plain —delightfully verdant during seven or eight months of the year —until it reaches its terminus at Sale, a town which spreads itself out in large and liberal expansiveness, like a young giant who wishes to have plenty of room to grow in. It evidently aspires to be a provincial capital, and can scarcely fail to become so. Its numerous cheese factories are an important element in its welfare. In the immediate neighbourhood are many lagoons, around which numbers of wild fowl used to build their nests, and a winding river that creeps leisurely between the rank vegetation on its banks, and indulges in many eccentric curves before it reaches a point, four miles distant from Sale, where it becomes navigable. Stratford, a small town in which two of the inns have been named in honour of the great poet who was born in the Warwickshire Stratford, lies in a northerly direction at the distance of a pleasant ride across country, and the journey can be extended to Maffra, lying in the midst of a splendid grazing country, fertilised, as regards the rich bottom lands, by the alluvial deposits which the river Macallister brings down from its sources in the Great Dividing Range. The cattle trade of an extensive area of pastoral country, stretching out for miles in every direction, is concentrated here, as a loop-line of railway connects it, via Traralgon, with Melbourne. From Heyfield, a small station on the Thomson River, anyone with some knowledge of the bush may follow up that stream until he reaches the famous mining region of Walhalla, one of the most remarkably situated goldfields in Victoria. Lying in a deep and narrow trough between steep and lofty ranges, it resembles, in everything but the character of its habitations, one of those secluded villages to be met with in out of the way valleys in Switzerland. But in place of the lowing of cattle, the tinkling of their bells among the tree-clad hills, and the horn of the herdsman, may be heard the rushing of steam, the whirring of machinery and the thud of quartz crushing mills; for the place has been called into existence by mining enterprise. This industry has met with magnificent rewards, the Lone Tunnel mining company, with a paid-up capital of only twelve thousand pounds, having divided upwards of a million among its fortunate shareholders, with no immediate prospect of a diminution of the yield; while the Long Tunnel Extended and Toombon appear to have a prosperous career before them. The tramways, which bring down timber from the mountains, and the flumes which serve as aqueducts, help also to diversify the aspect of Walhalla, and the approaches to the place itself are as picturesque as its position.

Retracing his course by way of Heyfield to Maffra, and thence riding across country to Stratford, and so by way of Delvine to Bairnsdale, the tourist finds himself in the midst of some of the richest country in this part of Victoria. The river Mitchell flows through a valley of fat pastures and of arable land that yields an abundant return to the husbandman. Tobacco, maize and hops are largely cultivated upon the banks of that stream, and the natural picturesqueness of the district is heightened in the summer and autumn by the "long-drawn aisles" of the hop gardens, with their far perspectives of spiral bines and curving tendrils and graceful leaves and golden flowers. In the picking season all is animation; the bines are cut down not far from the roots, the poles are lifted from the hills and laid across the bins, and hundreds of nimble fingers are engaged in plucking the aromatic clusters from the ripened plant. When the iron horse first penetrated the dense forests and wound his way through the mountain range separating Gippsland from the rest of the colony, it was said that a new province had been added to Victoria, and that province has come to be regarded as its garden and its playground; for its natural features are not less remarkable for their beauty than for their economic value. Its magnificent mountains are clothed with timber as noble in size as it is various in character. They are the habitat of the most gigantic of the eucalypti, of the myrtle, the white gum, the blackwood and the mountain ash, while the hickory and acacia flourish in the moist valleys. The numerous streams that, rise in the Great Divide irrigate valleys which maintain an almost perpetual verdure, the rainfall being nowhere less than from twenty to thirty inches a year; while in the neighbourhood of the mountains it reaches a maximum of upwards of fifty inches. Game abounds in the woods and on the plains, and the swamps and lagoons teem with black swan, teal, wild duck and other aquatic birds. The largest lake in Victoria, next to Corangamite and Tyrrell, is Lake Wellington in Gippsland, and in point of picturesqueness there is nothing in the colony comparable with Lake Tyers. If any extensive coal measures should be found in this part of the Australian continent, the surface indications point to the county of Buln-Buln as the future seat of that industry; and the wonderful richness of the gold deposits at Walhalla, and the evidences which present themselves of the presence of silver, lead, tin and copper in various parts of Gippsland encourage the belief that mineral treasures of untold extent and value await discovery and development in that region. But even without these, its agricultural and pastoral resources suffice to entitle it to be regarded as another Tuscany, to which, indeed, it does not yield in pictorial beauty, wanting only the consecration of antiquity and the charm of splendid and stately cities to perfect the comparison.

The railway from Melbourne to Tallarook, after passing Pascoe Vale, traverses a country which, in its billowy uplands and deep hollows, resembles the Sussex Downs. To this succeeds. an extensive plateau, in the neighbourhood of Broadmeadows, with an undulating landscape to the westward, bounded in the misty distance by the bulky form of Mount Macedon. A mile or two beyond Broadmeadows a cultivated district is entered upon, and the land dips somewhat to the northward at Somerton. It is lightly timbered, and no longer wears the bare and arid aspect which it did. When Craigieburn is reached, there loom above the wavy outline of some hills upon the right-hand side of the line the summits of the Hume Range, which forms the boundary between the counties of Bourke and Anglesey and culminates in Mount Disappointment at an altitude of two thousand six hundred and thirty-one feet, the range itself forming part of the Great Divide and becoming during many miles of the, journey a conspicuous and interesting feature in the landscape. The foreground has the park-like appearance of the more sparsely timbered portions of the Australian bush; and in one place a mamelon, plumed with feathery trees, lifts itself out of pastures dotted with white cattle as sleek as if they were grazing in the marshes of Holland. This is at Donnybrook, where the peacefulness of the landscape seems to be strangely inconsistent with the combative associations which have gathered around the name of the district. Presently there succeeds a tract of country so thickly strewn with small boulders that a spectator might imagine armies of giants had been skirmishing over it, and that these rough masses of stone had been the missiles employed in the combat. At Beveridge the ranges open out, and the magnitude of their proportions is, enhanced and the richness of their colour deepened by contrast with the smaller bulk and lighter lines of a more lowly series of hills in the middle distance. After passing Wallan Wallan the country becomes more undulating and picturesque, the hills draw nearer, the character of the timber changes, and there is more variety in the foliage. Onwards from Wandong, the railway winds through a gap in the Dividing Range one thousand and fifty feet above the level of the sea, and traverses a district where the wildness of primeval nature has been only here and there invaded by the axe of the splitter or the small clearance of the free-selector. The line pursues its course amidst a labyrinth of hills feathered with timber to their very tops, as in the immediate neighbourhood of Kilmore, an agricultural town lying upwards of seven hundred feet above the sea-level, and surrounded by a large area of good arable land. It contains five churches and a convent, and lies two miles distant from the railway station.

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