I have never been to Portland, but am always hoping to go, for I am told that it is one of the most charming and old-world spots in Victoria. Moreover, it possesses one of the most beautiful and natural harbours possible—the finest in all Victoria, Westernport coming second, and Melbourne nowhere at all, for it is only by constant dredging, deepening, and general tinkering that the Melbourne Harbour is a harbour at all, and not a hill. As it is the harbour charges are necessarily so exorbitant in Melbourne that Tasmanians are already congratulating themselves on the fact that it is an ill wind which blows nobody any good; and that when ships get larger, as they seem likely to do, Hobart will be the only port where they can lie, the depth of water, right up to the quay, being some 72 or 73 feet, sufficient for any ship ever likely to be launched to float in at ease; so that Hobart may really become in time the distributing centre for the whole of the Commonwealth. And there all the time is Portland, of which Victoria can make no use, simply because it is not her capital, and she is not far-seeing enough to cultivate a second string to her bow; while South Australia can make no use of it either, because she would rather that her produce should be hopelessly depreciated in value by miles of useless haulage, than risk parting with one iota of trade to a sister State. Truly it is like the trivial etiquette of a provincial English town, where the butcher’s wife is not on calling terms with the baker’s wife—or that immortal ballad of the two men on a desert island, who would die of hunger and thirst rather than speak when they had not been introduced. Oddly enough, it is not only in regard to its own affairs that Victoria seems incapable of realizing more than one town to each State or county; for, in spite of many protests, it still ships—with very few exceptions—its entire frozen produce to London, completely ignoring the other large and important English ports, and necessitating a most unnecessary amount of handling and extra freight charges in the distribution of its exports. Surely there is nothing so completely conservative as a democratic country can prove itself to be in some matters; a reversion to the original type, I suppose for, after all, the progenitors of the greater number of these Australians left England at a time when Toryism was at its height. CHAPTER II SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MELBOURNE