Old Melbourne Memories: Second Edition, RevisedBoldrewood, Rolf
History
Old Melbourne Memories: Second Edition, Revised
Boldrewood, Rolf
Frontier and pioneer life -- Australia -- Melbourne (Vic.); Victoria -- Description and travel; Victoria -- Social life and customs
Slight, vivacious, _soigne_ in dress and courteous of manner, a good
business man (was he not a bank director in his leisure moments, that
is, when he was not giving dinners and _dejeuners_, getting up picnics,
improvising balls and generally _faisant l'agreable_ all round?), he
managed to "place" Heidelberg at a considerable advance upon the
original purchase money.
I can see him now in the centre of a group of admiring friends, chiefly
of the fair sex, standing on one of the heights which overlooked the
meadows of the Yarra. "There, my dear madam, permit me to direct your
gaze. Do you not observe the silver thread of the river winding through
that exquisite green valley? It reminds me so vividly of the gliding
Neckar, and, alas! (here a most telling sigh) of scenes, of friends,
loved and lost. I can fancy that I look at my ever-remembered,
ever-regretted Heidelberg! Those slopes rising from the farther
river-shore will be terraced vineyards; and there, where you can faintly
discern the snow pinnacle on yon spur of the Australian Alps, I can
imagine the grand outline of the Hartz Mountains. It is, it shall be,
Heidelberg! Charles, open more champagne. We must christen this
thrice-favoured spot, on this trebly-auspicious day, worthily,
irrevocably!"
In some such fashion Heidelberg was named, and, what was more to the
purpose, sold. It is undeniably strong as to scenery, superior as to
soil; it has water privileges; but seeing that all this happened a
trifle over forty years agone, it may strike the original investors who
still hold a proportion of the ground, that they might have laid out
their cash to greater advantage, and that they have waited a good while
for that advance in prices which will recoup everything.
Heidelberg, thus sponsored, took rank as a fashionable suburb, and
divers personages, according to an inevitable natural law, were
attracted thereto. Captain George Brunswick Smyth, formerly of her
Majesty's 50th Regiment, purchased Chelsworth. Mr. David M'Arthur came
next to him. Then Waverley and Hartlands, the Rev. John Bolden, Mr.
Hawdon at Banyule, and later on Dr. Martin, beyond him again.
Still more distant, on the Rosanna estate, dwelt no less a potentate
than Mr. Justice Willis, the Supreme Court Rhadamanthus of the day, who
must have expended considerably more than half his time in driving in
his carriage and pair into Melbourne and back along the miry, almost
impassable track into which the winter rains invariably converted the
road.
This not undistinguished legal celebrity we had known in Sydney, and he
presented himself to my youthful intelligence as a good-natured,
mild-mannered old gentleman, with whom I used to go quail and duck
shooting in the meadows bordering the Yarra on Mr. Hawdon's and
neighbouring estates. On these occasions the late Mr. Archibald Thom,
who rented part of Banyule from Mr. Hawdon, often accompanied us. And a
very deadly shot he was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account